Police Take Custody of Mystery Headstone, Ask for Help in Finding Descendants

Posted on April 7, 2019 at 11:53 am by West Sider

By Michael McDowell

Police are now in custody of a mysterious headstone found in a planter under the West Side Highway by an Upper West Sider out for his daily walk.

The stone, engraved with the name of Rose Roy Weiss, was left in a planter under the highway between 53rd and 54th Streets, with few signs of why it was left there. Weiss died in 1986.

After reading about the headstone in West Side Rag, Deputy Inspector Timothy Malin, Commanding Officer of the NYPD’s 20th Precinct, referred the matter to colleagues at the Midtown North Precinct. Commanding Officer Inspector Mark Iocco and his team at Midtown North rescued Ms. Weiss’ headstone on Saturday morning, and now have it in safe keeping.

Police have been in touch with authorities in Miami-Dade County, where Weiss had lived, as they try to untangle the mystery.

NYPD asks any readers with information regarding the Weiss family to contact Community Affairs at Midtown North Precinct, (212) 767-8447.

NEWS | 3 comments | permalink
    1. Billy Amato says:
      April 7, 2019 at 1:13 pm

      I knew there was there’s more to this than meets the eye.
      I expect follow-ups to this story from the West Rag. Let the mystery begin.

    2. Not So Fast... says:
      April 7, 2019 at 3:51 pm

      Please note this comment by “Ollysdad” on the original, April 5th WSR post on this story:

      For all amateur sleuths and genealogists–the speculation by the tombstone’s finder that Rose Roy Weiss was the woman who lived on Grandview Place in the Bronx in 1930 and was married to William Weiss is incorrect. Public records show that Rose R Weiss was born Rose Mary Cohen (she also used the name Rose Cone). After her marriage to William Weiss, she married the playwright Lyon Mearson, and died in Las Vegas in 1993. She and the two sons Richard and Robert noted in the article are all mentioned in Lyon Mearson’s 1966 NY Times obituary. The Rose Weiss buried under this errant tombstone is also not the Rose Weiss who was one of the pioneering Jews of Miami Beach (she died in 1974), or the Rose Weiss married to John Eugene Weiss who lived in Dade County in the 1940s (she died in 1978). And there’s something incongruous about the Vital Records office noting in her file that she had ‘no known relations’ when someone appears to have paid for a tombstone and declared her a ‘beloved mother’.

    3. Pat conway says:
      April 7, 2019 at 11:08 pm

      Is the stone heavy?