Marin cemetery controversy pivots to $50M money battle

A Marin County cemetery has surrendered its license amid allegations of graveyard neglect, but a legal fight continues for $50 million in disputed funds.

Mount Tamalpais Cemetery and three other cemeteries that were owned by Buck Kamphausen, a Vallejo businessman, agreed to surrender their licenses in December as part of a settlement with the California Cemetery and Funeral Bureau.

The $50 million involves assets in an endowment care fund (ECF) and a special care fund (SCF). Most of the money is intended for the care and maintenance of Mount Tamalpais Cemetery and the other cemeteries: Skyview Memorial Lawn in Vallejo, Chapel of the Light in Fresno and Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland.

In November, prior to surrendering the licenses, Kamphausen and Joshua Voss, the former vice president and secretary of Mount Tamalpais Cemetery, transferred ownership of the land and assets of the four cemeteries to Evergreen Ministries, a tax-exempt religious organization that is not subject to regulation by the state.

In December, however, a Solano County Superior Court judge appointed the Cemetery and Funeral Bureau as conservator over the cemeteries’ ECFs.

The four cemeteries now owned by Evergreen Ministries have filed a court action to regain control of the care funds. Two days of hearings were held last month in Solano County Superior Court.

“The self-dealing transfer of the cemetery lands and assets to Evergreen Ministries would give Kamphausen and Voss access to over $50 million in ECF and SCF without giving the consumers whose cemetery purchases supplied the funds for the ECF and SCF an opportunity to object,” Julianne Mossler, a California deputy attorney general, wrote in a filing for the hearing.

The hearings included testimony by Ray Anthony Jackson, the president and chief executive officer of Evergreen Ministries, and Voss. Mossler questioned Jackson regarding the dilapidated condition of Mount Tamalpais Cemetery. Jackson said Evergreen Ministries has been unable to make significant improvements at the cemetery because of a lack of funds. He said there was no timetable for providing water to the cemetery.

Buckhausen allegedly invested some of the ECF money in gold. According to a legal filing by Mossler, 36 pounds of gold was stored in a vault at Skyview Memorial Lawn.

Voss testified that the gold had appreciated in value by $400,000 since it was purchased.

More hearings are scheduled for July 16 and 17.

In a court filing, attorneys representing the four cemeteries assert that Evergreen Ministries will be unable to properly maintain the facilities if the Cemetery and Funeral Bureau maintains its conservatorship.

They state that since losing control of the funds, the cemeteries have had to rely on charitable lending and donations from businesses associated with Kamphausen.

They acknowledge that the bureau has offered to dispense whatever funds are needed. However, the attorneys say such a process would be cumbersome and time-consuming, and make allocations subject to the “arbitrary discretion” of the bureau.

Kamphausen agreed to surrender the licenses after the Cemetery and Funeral Bureau accused him of using endowment funds for purposes other than the maintenance of the Mount Tamalpais Cemetery. The bureau also accused him of chronically failing to file annual reports on endowment care funds at all four cemeteries.

The bureau also alleged that Kamphausen failed to properly maintain the grounds at the Mount Tamalpais and Evergreen cemeteries, primarily by starving them of water.

According to the bureau’s complaint, the grounds at Mount Tamalpais Cemetery “were dried out and brown, there was substantial uncontrolled weed growth, and there was extensive evidence of rodent activity. Many of the grave markers were obscured by dirt and debris, evidently as the result of the rodent activity.”

Families with relatives buried at the San Rafael cemetery say its condition remains dismal, despite the change in management.

“It’s worse,” said Christina Cliff, who recently buried her mother there. “It looks horrible. The water’s still not being supplied there. I could only have a private burial because of the fact that I didn’t want people to see it that way.”

Steve Wax, a Sebastopol resident, visited his mother’s grave in May after hearing about the problems at the San Rafael cemetery.

“I got alarmed because my mother is buried there, and I was going to bury my sister who died recently there,” Wax said. “The grass was pretty much dead, and there were gopher holes. It was just terrible.”

Congregation Kol Shofar in Tiburon has filed an amicus brief in support of the state’s effort to retain supervision of the ECF, according to Gordon Gladstone, the executive director. Kol Shofar purchased 1,200 plots in the cemetery in 1989 and has been selling them back over time to congregants.

“It’s a tragedy,” Gladstone said.

Gladstone said the fact that some of the headstones in the cemetery are beginning to tip is an emotional trigger for Jews because historically in Europe one of the principal acts of vandalism against the Jewish community was to knock over gravestones.

Signs at the entrance to the cemetery warn those who enter to beware of “dying and dead limbs and trees” that are “breaking and falling,” as well as dangerous animals: “mountain lions, bobcats, coyote packs and rattlesnakes.”

Kamphausen could not be reached for comment.

Jack Thornton, a longtime funeral director at Mount Tamalpais Cemetery, said, “Actually, quite a bit has changed. We’ve hired an outside source to cut grass and weeds, because we only have three employees. And right now we’ve got the county and the fire department cutting trees and getting rid of underbrush.”

“Our biggest problem was we didn’t have any water because there was a drought,” Thornton said.

He said the cemetery can’t use reclaimed water because it lacks a water line for recycled water.