BENTONVILLE -- A Bentonville man, accused of placing dead animals on another man's grave, was ordered Monday to avoid the Pea Ridge Cemetery.
Joseph Stroud, 79, is charged with felony defacing objects of public respect and misdemeanor harassment. He pleaded innocent to the charges at his arraignment before Benton County Circuit Judge Robin Green.
Stroud is accused of purposely damaging a burial monument by repeatedly placing dead animals on Fred McKinney's gravestone between May 31 and July 31, according to court documents. He's accused of harassing and alarming McKinney's family members and damaging the tombstone.
The judge ordered Stroud not to have any contact with the Pea Ridge Cemetery.
Stroud was arrested Aug. 10.
Shannon Nobles told Brian Stamps, a Pea Ridge police officer, on July 31 her family found dead animals at the grave site of her grandfather, Fred Allen McKinney, according to the probable-cause affidavit. She said the dead animals started appearing May 31.
McKinney died Aug. 24, 2015.
The family placed cameras directed at the headstone. The cameras captured a person leaving a dead animal on top of the tombstone and walking back to a gray Dodge Journey, according to court documents.
The person was wearing a teal and white woman's jacket, sunglasses and a woman's wig, according to the affidavit.
Nobles told Stamps she was driving by the cemetery one day and noticed a gray Dodge Journey leaving the cemetery and she followed it. When the car stopped in a parking lot, she took photographs and videos of it, according to the affidavit.
A family member told police she recognized Stroud as someone her grandparents knew, and that they had farms next to each other for several years, according to the affidavit. The family member recalled a lawsuit between them, and she said she thought Stroud lost the case, according to the affidavit.
Nobles said she was jogging one day and saw Stroud drive away from the cemetery. She went to the grave site and found a dead possum on it and eight live baby possums inside one of the flower vases, according to the affidavit.
Nobles said the family removed 16 dead animals from her grandfather's grave, according to the affidavit. One of the animals had left a brown stain on the tombstone after being draped over it.
Stamps was told by a funeral home director the tombstone couldn't be repaired and would cost $2,529 to replace, according to the affidavit.
Stroud told Stamps he visited the cemetery to check on his wife's grave, and denied leaving animals on McKinney's grave site, according to the affidavit. Stroud denied he was the person in a photograph Stamps showed him.
Stroud's next court appearance is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Nov. 16.