GB cemetery worker charged with stealing guitar from casket

One way to keep your Tele from theft

Randall Jourdan will spend eternity with his beloved Fender Telecaster after all.

It was returned to Jourdan's coffin over the weekend after the grounds superintendent of Allouez Catholic Cemetery and Chapel Mausoleum was accused of taking it.

Steven Conard, 39, was charged Monday in Brown County Circuit Court with theft from a corpse. If convicted, he faces 10 years in prison and a fine of $25,000. Brown County sheriff's deputies recovered the guitar from Conard's home in nearby Bellevue, Wis.

Family members say Jourdan's hands had been wrapped around the instrument's headstock as he lay in his coffin. Jourdan, of Oneida, Wis., died Sept. 19 at age 67.

Jourdan's live-in girlfriend, Shirley Schuyler, said Jourdan owned several guitars, many of which were displayed at his wake and funeral. But the Fender Telecaster, a custom-built reproduction of one played by a famous musician, was Jourdan's favorite.

"It was his one wish to have it with him," Schuyler said. "Whether he said it jokingly or not, he always said it, and that's what we tried to do."

Deputies learned of the theft Friday from the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay's director of facilities, Tammy Jo Basten, who reported the guitar missing from the casket.

The instrument had been in the casket when employees of Ryan Funeral Home transported the body Thursday to the suburban Green Bay, Wis., cemetery, the sheriff's department said. Funeral home employees verified its presence at the request of the dead man's family before putting the casket in the diocese's burial chamber.

A diocese employee became suspicious after overhearing Conard saying, "That's a Telly, a really expensive guitar. I have to have that guitar. It's too expensive to be in a crypt."

After his arrest, Conard allegedly said: "This isn't something I normally do. I just have a respect for fine musical instruments."

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This has all the beginnings of a good haunting story.  Guitar starts moving around when no one touching it, man seeks help by listening to Hendrix record backward, guitar stars on fire and plays On Eagles Wings over and over until returned to casket....  you know, typical haunting.