OGDEN, Utah — In the back corner of the lot where Nationwide Monument used to sit, was something Shelley Snyder had been waiting on for about four months.
It was her father’s headstone. Last month, we told you how Byron Session’s Jr., Snyder’s dad, died in September at age 76.
His family buried him at the Bountiful City Cemetery without the headstone he designed and paid for years earlier. The stone was sitting at Nationwide Monument.
“I have texted,” Snyder said, “emailed, gone on the website, Facebook messaged them. I have done everything and never received any response what so ever from the company.”
“I make a point to come here at least twice a week just to see what’s going on,” she added.
“One of the nights I came down here this fence was unlocked, and I thought I could just call people and drive in there and grab it and nobody would know. But my boyfriend was telling me about, you know, getting arrested for trespassing and all that. So I didn’t do it.”
Nationwide Monument had solid online reviews until last year. That’s when it’s apparent owner, 43-year-old Jeremiah B. Anderson, was sent back to prison. He is on Utah’s sex offender registry for a 2007 conviction of attempted sodomy of a child.
Anderson was still on parole when prosecutors in April charged him with new counts of rape, sodomy and other crimes. He’s accused of meeting a 16-year-old girl on a dating site and paying her $300 for sex. Anderson has not yet entered a plea in his new case.
Nationwide Monument kept taking orders into the fall, according to customers who have since complained online. At least a dozen of those customers have said online or to FOX 13 that they not received their headstones or a refund.
Court records also say Nationwide Monument stopped paying rent. Saying the company owed $8,162, the landlord of the building went to court to evict Nationwide Monument. That eviction process was recently completed.
When we heard merchandise and equipment was being removed from what had been Nationwide Monument’s location on Wall Avenue in Ogden, we went there and saw something we hadn’t seen before – people.
Workers there said they were cleaning out the property for the landlord. They gave us permission to search the lot.
We found Sessions’ headstone in the back corner. His date of death hadn’t been inscribed yet, but it otherwise looked ready to go on his grave.
We called Snyder and told her the workers would let her take the headstone. She called another headstone company to pick it up, and Snyder drove from her home in Davis County to Nationwide Monument one more time.
“I am so elated right now,” Snyder said. “ I … I’m overwhelmed, and elated.”
Another woman, who did not want to be identified, told FOX 13 she recently drove from New Mexico – 10 hours each way – to pick up her loved one’s headstone.
While Sessions’ headstone was being hauled away, we looked around for other headstones, including the one that Lashundra Anderson, of Memphis, Tenn., and who is of no relation to the Nationwide Monument owner, ordered. Her nephew and brother both died in 2020.
We couldn’t find the headstone Anderson ordered or any others that appeared ready for pickup.
“I don’t really know what we could have done different,” Snyder said. “They were a reputable company that was in business and doing what they were supposed to be doing and it just went south really fast.”
The remaining executives of Nationwide Monument did not return our messages seeking comment. The landlord has set up a phone number Nationwide Monument’s outstanding customers can call to inquire about their headstones. The number is 801-436-5877