DATE: Wednesday, September 17, 1997         TAG: 9709170505

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY NANCY LEWIS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   61 lines

VICTORIAN-ERA MAUSOLEUM'S GATES STOLEN FROM NORFOLK CEMETERY

A pair of ornate bronze gates that for more than a century guarded the entrance to a Victorian mausoleum in historic Elmwood Cemetery have been stolen.

The theft of the 1892 ``gingerbread'' gates, 2 feet high with green patina and viney tendrils and leaves, was discovered by Margaret Elinsky on Monday.

As an organizer of Friends of Norfolk's Historical Cemeteries, she was conducting a tour and was shocked to see the gates gone, a gaping space where they had once swung. She said she last saw them adorning the fence to the LeKies mausoleum on Sept. 4.

``They were just stripped right off there, bolts and all,'' Elinsky said Tuesday.

One of only two large mausoleums in the cemetery, the LeKies shrine was built in the form of a Gothic church and even has a 7-foot stained-glass window depicting an angel. It is considered by experts to be one of the finest memorials in Elmwood and holds the remains of John and Emma LeKies, a prominent Norfolk couple of the Victorian era.

Detective Stormy Thorson, who is investigating the theft for the Norfolk Police Department, said Tuesday he has had a photograph of the mausoleum enlarged to get a good look at the intricate fretwork on the gates and will check antique shops and junkyards in the area beginning today.

Elinsky said the gates, like other architectural elements of old cemeteries, would bring a high price on the antique market. She guessed they would command close to $1,000, since smaller pieces of wrought-iron fencing fetch $300 to $400.

``They're hot stuff,'' said Elinsky, who is also director of the Hunter House Victorian Museum. She believes that there was also an attempt to remove a bronze urn that stands in front of the mausoleum. It had been removed, along with its weighty marble pedestal, from a marble base and lay overturned on the ground.

On Tuesday, with monumental effort, workers wrestled the urn and its pedestal back onto the base.

Robert Kirby, superintendent of Norfolk cemeteries, said Tuesday that while thefts of memorial elements in the city's cemeteries are not common, they seem to be on the increase.

It's the second time in a year that memorials in the cemetery have been looted.

In February, a statue that marked the Victorian grave of a young girl turned up in an antique shop when its disappearance was publicized. It was returned to Elmwood.

Though Elmwood is not fenced and gated, police make frequent drives through it at night, Kirby said.

Elinsky stood in front of the granite shrine Tuesday and said she worries that the intricately cast 10-foot bronze doors to the sanctuary itself will be pilfered if security at the cemetery is not stepped up.

Elinsky said the missing gates are about 2 feet high, 18 inches wide and 2 inches thick, with a fan also decorating the spokes. ILLUSTRATION: The small gates shown in front of the LeKies

Mausoleum, in this earlier photo, were discovered on Monday to have

been stolen from Elmwood Cemetery. The shrine is in the form of a

Gothic church. KEYWORDS: CEMETERY THEFT ROBBERY VANDALISM

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