Scum

From a story in the Wall Street Journal:

When a man walking among the graves at the Mount Emblem Cemetery in this Chicago suburb suddenly jumped into his car and sped off one day in August, a worker jotted down his license plate number and called police.

A few days later, police say, they tailed the blue Ford Focus to another cemetery and watched as the man collected 51 bronze vases attached to grave markers in about 15 minutes. He then drove to a scrap-metal yard, where police say he had already sold hundreds of vases with a replacement value of up to $600 each.

 The vases, about 10 inches high and three inches in diameter, are made of bronze, an alloy rich in copper. They typically screw into a plate on the grave marker and are secured with a small chain. Although the price of copper has dropped about 20% this year, most major metals prices are still near historic highs.

Worth knowing about if you have any relevant family gravesite decorations - though I don't suppose there's much you can do to prevent the theft.  More at the link.