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November 16, 2009

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Officers arrest man trying to sell skull taken from crypt

Thursday, July 15, 1999 | 9:30 a.m.

Undersheriff Bill Callahan said Wednesday that David Lowell Shaughnessy, 38, was arrested by officers who responded to a complaint that he was trying to make a deal with someone in a local motel parking lot.

Shaughnessy, booked Tuesday for felony grave-robbing and possession of stolen property, faces a preliminary hearing July 28 in Justice Court. He's being held in lieu of $10,000 bail.

A sheriff's report says Shaughnessy had the skull in a backpack, and admitted to officers that he took it from a crypt at Lone Mountain Cemetery.

A search of the crypt revealed that the skull was that of Patrick Henry Clayton, who died in December 1874. Still missing is the skull of his wife, also taken from the crypt.

Callahan described Clayton as a founding member of the Nevada Democratic Party, an early-day Carson City lawyer and an unsuccessful state Supreme Court candidate.

Local historians also say that during the Civil War era Clayton was a Southern sympathizer, and spent three weeks in a military jail as a result.

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