The two men slipped into Newark's Holy Sepulchre Cemetery on a January night in 1999 and crept through the cold stillness of gravestones and crypts.
They came upon the mausoleum of Leonard Perna, a bar owner from Orange whose body had lain undisturbed for 13 years.
The men smashed through the plexiglass entrance. A heavy marble slab covering Perna's coffin was lifted, and his remains -- which became part of a black-magic ritual -- were stolen.
As unholy as the crime may seem, it was only one of a series of body thefts -- including four others in Holy Sepulchre -- authorities say are linked to Palo Mayombe, a religious cult whose priests use human remains in their rituals.
"It is an unfortunate thing in Newark that the theft of human bodies has become a business," Dean Maglione, an assistant Essex County prosecutor, said yesterday as a Palo recruit named Franklin Sanabria Jr. was sentenced for taking part in the burglary of Perna's crypt.
Perna's body was stolen Jan. 13, 1999. Newark police lifted a print from the broken plexiglass and arrested Sanabria, 28, of Newark, who told police he broke into the crypt with another man who was introducing him to Palo Mayombe.
Sanabria told authorities that he panicked and fled after they entered the crypt and that his associate left with the remains. Maglione said the associate is in prison on other charges and is not likely to be prosecuted. He said the remains have not been recovered, and the investigation is closed.
A grand jury declined to indict Sanabria for theft, but charged him with burglarizing the crypt. He pleaded guilty in February to third-degree burglary.
Superior Court Judge Michael Petrolle sentenced him yesterday to four years of probation and ordered him to serve 200 hours of community service doing maintenance at Rosemount Memorial Park in Newark. He also ordered him to pay $4,200 in restitution to repair the Perna crypt.
Before the sentencing, Rosanne Perna, the dead man's daughter, told Petrolle that her family is still in agony over the loss of his remains.
"My father is missing," she said. "My father cannot rest in peace. I have a grandmother who cries every time the subject comes up."
Afterward, Rosanne Perna criticized Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, which is operated by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark, for what she said was its failure to put lighting in the cemetery even though it has been plagued by vandalism. She said her family's crypt had been vandalized several times before.
Holy Sepulchre officials referred questions about the Perna case and the issue of body thefts to the archdiocese. Jim Goodness, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said he would not comment.
Maglione said that while he was handling the Perna case, managers of Holy Sepulchre told him that two other bodies were stolen in November, as well as one in January and one in 1997.
In 1999, Kearny police charged a Palo priest and several of his followers with stealing the 83-year-old remains of an infant from a crypt in Arlington Cemetery. Detective Thomas Silkie, who handled the case, said the priest had been using the cemetery for midnight rituals with severed animal tongues and other bizarre items.
And two Paterson men were prosecuted in Passaic County in 1997 after breaking into a crypt at Cedar Lawn Cemetery and stealing a woman's skull. They are believed to have sold it to a religious cult for $500, but John Latoracca, senior assistant Passaic County prosecutor, said the cult was never identified.
Palo priests, known as Paleros, conduct ceremonies around a steaming cauldron filled with human bones, sticks, railroad spikes, tools and other symbolic items. A human skull is put in last and is said to give spiritual powers to the mixture.
Palo is an illegitimate offspring of Bakongo, a West African religion that slaves brought to Cuba in the 19th century and was transported to the United States with Cuban immigration in the last few decades, said Oloye "Baba" Ifa Karade, an East Orange teacher who has written books on African religions.
Karade said practitioners of Bakongo worship at the graves of their ancestors, but they do not remove remains. He said Palo adherents are shunned by legitimate Bakongo worshippers.
"This is something done by people who really don't know what is going on with their own faith," he said. "I am leading a movement to bring people out of Palo and into Bakongo."
Silkie, the Kearny detective, said the 3-month-old boy's remains were stolen from a crypt in Arlington Cemetery in August 1999. Inside the crypt, police found a decapitated rooster with its head placed inside a small clay cup.
After consulting with the FBI, New York City police and other authorities on religious cults, Silkie said he learned that Palo priests adopt a specific cemetery for their rituals and operate there exclusively. He said that even before the body theft, Arlington Cemetery staff reported a series of suspicious discoveries.
He said they found machetes imbedded in trees, animal tongues on the ground and stuck to trees, and clothing buried just below the soil in front of graves.
Silkie said police conducted surveillance of the cemetery after the body theft and arrested the priest, Alberto Lima, a Cuban immigrant, after he was seen entering the cemetery. They found a cauldron in his car.
Palo priests typically use bones and skulls smuggled into this country from Latin America, he said, and resort to thefts in this country less commonly. But he said there is a black market for such objects and that skulls can be sold for thousands of dollars.
"The rituals go on in cemeteries all the time," he said. "They are more common than the actual theft of bodies. But if police are not trained in the practice of Palo Mayombe, they won't even know what they are looking at."
William Kleinknecht covers criminal justice issues and the Essex County courts. He can be reached at wkleinknecht@starledger.com or (973) 642-4065.