Meanwhile, in New Jersey...

For months, people complained that flowers they left on the gravesites of their loved ones at the First Reformed Church Cemetery in Pompton Plains, N.J. were missing. Gone. Vanished.

New Jersey cops don't mess around. They set up surveillance cameras at the cemetery, which, conveniently enough, is right across the street from Pequannock Police Headquarters.  They borrowed the video gear from the police department in nearby Riverdale.

And they placed some new floral arrangements at the site of the disappearing daisies, and waited.   

Wingate mugshot

Shortly, they got video images of a woman driving up in a minivan and making off with the planted plants (possibly while wearing pleated pants, but the police report fails to make that clear).

And the Riverdale police said they recognized the woman, and claim she is one Lynda Wingate, 59, a former dispatcher for that department.

Pequannock Police Captain Christopher Depuyt says Wingate says she is the woman seeing hauling off the hollyhocks, but they have it all wrong.  

She said she makes it a habit to go to the cemetery to clean up the place, remove the aging roses, get rid of gladioli, let go of lilies, clear out carnations.  Capt. Depuyt is not having it. "We just had those flowers placed there," he says.

Interviewed by the local CBS station in New York, Wingate said flowers vanish from her own mother's grave all the time, and added, "You're innocent until proven guilty."

As a former police dispatcher myself, I say she should have known better.  Also, as a citizen myself, I say she should have known better. IF she's guilty, that is.