The owner of the Mount Tamalpais Cemetery and Mortuary is facing possible state discipline over alleged legal violations at the San Rafael graveyard and three other Bay Area cemeteries.
Buck Kamphausen, who lives in Vallejo, has owned the San Rafael cemetery since 1982. It was founded in 1880 by Henry DuBois, a former Union Army physician who moved west after the Civil War.
The state Attorney General’s Office filed the accusation on behalf of the state Cemetery and Funeral Bureau. The other graveyards cited in the accusation are Skyview Memorial Lawn in Vallejo, Chapel of the Light in Fresno and Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland.
The accusation calls for suspending or revoking the license of all four cemeteries and suspending or revoking Kamphausen’s cemetery manager license.
Kamphausen, who did not respond to a request for comment, is identified in the accusation as the manager of the Mount Tamalpais, Skyview and Evergreen cemeteries. He is listed as the president at Chapel of the Light.
Kamphausen is accused of using endowment funds for purposes other than the maintenance of the Mount Tamalpais Cemetery and Mortuary and chronically failing to file annual reports on endowment care funds at all four cemeteries.
The accusation also asserts that Kamphausen failed to properly maintain the grounds at the Mount Tamalpais and Evergreen cemeteries, primarily by starving them of water.
Christina Cliff, whose father and sister are buried at the San Rafael cemetery, said she was horrified when she visited it two years ago.
“I went there to check on my mother’s burial site at about that time because she had just entered hospice,” Cliff said. “The place was literally a dust bowl.”
Cliff couldn’t find the headstones of the graves belonging to her sister and father because they were buried in dirt.
“I was so distraught sitting on my family’s plots to see the degradation that the site had fallen into,” she said.
Cliff said the cemetery had become infested with gophers.
“That’s what happened to my family’s plots,” she said. “They basically sunk under all the gopher holes.”
Cliff said she filed a complaint with the Cemetery and Funeral Bureau and a year passed with no response. She said it was only after she complained to Gov. Gavin Newsom that the Attorney General’s Office moved to file the accusation in May.
Cliff, who had been planning to testify in connection with the accusation, said she was notified Tuesday by Brett Kingsbury, a deputy attorney general, that a settlement has been reached. Cliff said she was told she would have to wait at least four weeks for any information regarding the terms of the agreement.
Kingsbury declined to comment.
Peter Fournier, a spokesperson for the Cemetery and Funeral Bureau, said, “The bureau cannot comment on pending disciplinary action.”
Cliff said, “I hope the settlement is such that Kamphausen is not allowed to own the cemetery any longer.”
The accusation states that a bureau field representative found the San Rafael cemetery grounds in substantial disrepair — “dried out and brown” with overgrown weeds, evidence of rodent infestation and grave markers obscured by dirt. In the case of the Evergreen Cemetery, the accusation states that Kamphausen failed to adequately water the grounds.
California law requires every cemetery that has an endowment fund to “ensure the property is kept in a condition so as to prevent the cemetery’s offensive deterioration.”
Endowment care cemeteries are required to provide a “sufficient supply of water to keep cemetery grass and plants as green as seasonally possible in accordance with the natural terrain, availability of water and local or county ordinances regarding water use.”
The accusation also states that a 2022 audit of Mount Tamalpais Cemetery and Mortuary found that many of the checks flowing in and out of the endowment fund appeared to be “related to personal expenditures” and had nothing to do with cemetery operations. The audit also found that the amount of money expended out of the funds exceeded the their income.
California law requires each privately-owned cemetery established on or after Sept. 7, 1955, to create an endowment care trust fund and to deposit funds to the trust for each interment space they sell.
The deposits cemeteries make to endowment care trust funds must be invested with the intent to earn income for the general care and maintenance of the cemetery. Once a cemetery is filled, the fund is used to pay for ongoing maintenance.
As recently as 2011, the Evergreen Cemetery Association, which listed Kamphausen as its principal officer, reported its affiliation with more than 10 cemeteries, funeral homes and crematories across California, including Mount Tamalpais and Skyview Memorial, on its tax return. That year, the Evergreen Cemetery Association reported more than $1 million in revenue and more than $42 million in total net assets, but a year-to-year loss of about $86,000.
On its 2010 tax return, the Evergreen Cemetery Association listed 15 antique cars and other conveniences, including a horse-drawn hearse and amphibious fire boat, as investments totaling over $600,000.
The violation most commonly cited in the accusation is that Kamphausen repeatedly over more than a dozen years failed to submit annual endowment fund reports and other reports in a timely manner for the four cemeteries. Kamphausen was cited for more than 30 alleged violations, dating back to 2006 in the case of the San Rafael cemetery. Some reports came in more than two years late.
Kamphausen paid some $68,000 in fines but continued to file reports late. When the state accusation was filed in May, Mount Tamalpais Cemetery and Mortuary and Chapel of the Light had not yet submitted their 2020 annual reports, and the Skyview and Evergreen cemeteries hadn’t turned in either their 2020 or 2019 reports.
The accusation is just the latest of several involving Kamphausen.
An October 2020 accusation asserted that Chapel of the Light wrote at least $583,241 in preneed funeral contracts from 2006 to 2017, but failed to establish a preneed funeral trust.
Kamphausen and Chapel of the Light funeral director Michael Rabara, who is also named in the accusation, accepted the “truth of each and every charge of the allegation.” As a result, Chapel of the Light was placed on probation for three years.
An accusation filed in April 2015 against Sunrise Memorial Cemetery, which Kamphausen was managing, asserted that he had failed to maintain the property in accordance with the law. In addition to dried out grass, highlights cited from a bureau inspection included: monuments broken or lying in pieces; unmowed grass; cracked roads; markers not visible because of overgrowth and debris; and public areas not cleared of trash and debris. A stained and dirty mattress was found in the breezeway of a mausoleum.
An accusation filed in February 2015 asserted that Evergreen Cemetery, where Kamphausen was manager, had violated the law by failing to provide a sufficient supply of water to keep the cemetery’s grass and plants green.
During a hearing held before an administrative law judge to assess the merits of that accusation, Amber Weaver, a bureau representative, testified that Kamphausen told her that he had decided to cut off watering at Evergreen, as well as two other cemeteries managed by him, because, “water is for the living, and not the dead.”
The Evergreen Cemetery is where 412 unclaimed bodies from the 1978 mass murder-suicide in “Jonestown,” Guyana, are buried.
