‘Where’s My Grandma?’: City without answers with La Junta woman’s body missing from grave
Tyler Cunnington
LA JUNTA, Colo. (KRDO) – A Pueblo man tells KRDO13 Investigates that for decades, he visited what he thought was his grandmother’s grave, her body wasn’t even in the plot.
Sam Montano says that his grandmother, Bessie L. Zamora, has had a headstone at the Cavalry Cemetery in the City of La Junta since her early death in 1946. She was only 30.
Bessie L. Zamora
It was just last fall in 2024 that city officials with La Junta told him that someone else could be buried there, or that the grave might even be empty. It was the same plot where he buried his own mother just a year prior to the notice.
Now, the City of La Junta has been ordered by a judge to pay for the movement of Montano’s mother’s remains, her headstone, and his grandmother’s headstone. However, there’s still a major missing piece to the puzzle: his grandma is still missing.
The Family:
Montano has several members of his family tree at the Cavalry Cemetery, including one of his great-grandfathers, his mother’s uncles, and, of course, his grandma Bessie.
Bessie left behind several children of hers in her untimely passing, one of them being Sam’s mother, Florence Pacheco. Many knew her as just Flo.
Florence Montano, courtesy of Sam Montano
Flo was only a toddler when Bessie passed, meaning she went her whole life with no memories of her own mother, something that stuck with her through her own death from cancer in 2022.
“Her dying wish was to be buried beside her own mother’s grave,” explained Montano. “She never knew her mother very much, so she felt she wanted to be close to her in death. I promised her on her deathbed that I would do that.”
Montano now bears a tattoo on his arm, matching a symbol on his mother’s headstone. As a strong catholic family, the ink has helped keep her spirit with him.
“It’s a reminder of what we’ve gone through, and it’s also a reminder of my faith,” he explained.
In September of 2023, in order to fulfill his mother’s wish, he buried her cremains directly across from the headstone for Bessie.
Bank records even show that Montano paid the City of La Junta $155 dollars for her burial, which then happened just a few days later, as seen in photographs below:
“My kind of last memory of her here, before closing the dirt, was me putting her in the ground,” said Montano.
The Phone Call:
Then, almost exactly one year to the date later, in September of 2024, everything changed.
Montano got a voicemail on his phone from Erin Harris, who was the contracted City Attorney for La Junta. She stated she needed to talk with him about the grave plot and gave her condolences over his mother’s recent passing.
However, upon calling her back, the news he got left him stunned.
“They have no idea where my grandmother is, and that while that might be her headstone, her direct quote to me was that there might be no one in that cemetery plot, there might be two people, there might be anybody,” said Montano, recalling the phone call. “I asked her, well, how are we going to find out about this? And she said, ‘It’s too expensive to find out about this, the city won’t pay for it.'”
KRDO13 Investigates found within La Junta cemetery code that it costs $1,500 for the disinterment of an adult gravesite, a process that needs the written approval of a judge and those who own the grave site.
They also tell Montano that he is not the rightful owner of the grave plot where his mother, Flo, and his grandma Bessie are laid to rest. Instead, they later explain that another family, two sisters, own the plot, and it’s their grandmother whose Flo’s cremains were buried alongside.
KRDO13 Investigates is not naming the two siblings involved in the situation at the request of Montano, who believes they haven’t done anything wrong. It is important to note that their grandma died the same year as Bessie did, in 1946, and even has the same last name as Zamora.
A records request from KRDO13 Investigates shows a copy of the plot deed from 1947, bestowed to a Juan Zamora.
The City Gets the Courts Involved:
The entire situation prompted the City of La Junta to file a Declaratory Judgment with the Otero County Court. It is a legal process that avoids going to a trial by having all parties within a certain matter agree to certain stipulations in order to settle the situation.
In this case, the City of La Junta, as the plaintiff, filed the judgment with Mr. Montano, and the two sisters, as co-defendants, alleging that Montano was claiming to have had ownership of the grave plot, which comes into obvious conflict with the sisters’ possession of the deed.
However, KRDO13 Investigates found through a records request that the court filing almost didn’t even happen. On September 3, 2024, emails between the City of La Junta and the two sisters show that the city was going to move both Flo and Bessie’s markers and Flo’s remains, without even telling Montano.
It was only when the sisters went out of their way to request that the city contact Montano to alert him of the issue at hand that the city then arranged the call to him later that month.
“We owe a debt of gratitude to that family because they prevented them from moving my mom anywhere. We don’t even know where they would have put her,” explained Montano.
Putting his disbelief aside that the city almost took action without his consent, Montano says he also has no idea where the idea of a dispute over the plot’s ownership even came from.
“We never claimed to own the plot, ever. We asked and sought permission from La Junta to bury her there, and we got the permission, and we find out later that, of course, we don’t own the plot,” explained Montano.
Its still unclear as to how Bessie was buried at the grave decades ago if the plot didn’t technically belong to Montano’s lineage at the time, nor how Montano was able to pay the City of La Junta $155 dollars for Flo’s burial in 2023, if he did not own the plot either.
It’s one of many questions the City of La Junta has not answered for us as of the writing of this article.
The purpose of the judgement, initially filed on December 17th, 2024, was to have an Otero County judge decide what Montano and the two sisters would need to do with their property, which in this case, is the headstones for Bessie and Flo, as well as Flo’s buried urn.
The stipulations began rather straightforward:
Firstly, the city would arrange the removal of the cremains of Florence Pacheco, as well as her marker, and the marker of Bessie L. Zamora, from the plot, and have them placed under the control of Samuel Montano, who intended to have them moved to Roselawn Cemetery in Pueblo, near his home.
Secondly, the City of La Junta would reimburse the sisters with up to $700 for the creation of a new headstone for their grandma.
Montano, however, took issue with the fact that the city ignored his request for the city to pay for the transfer of Flo and Bessie’s items, since he felt that he was the one being wronged in the situation.
“What they first offered us was, they offered us first to sell a plot [to us] here. Then they offered us a plot here, and then they offered us $1,500,” explained Montano. “We want to move on my mother to Pueblo, where we live and I made it clear to [their attorney] that we don’t want my mother here, because, one, they try to move her without us knowing, and two, they lost her mother, for God’s sakes.”
An email obtained by KRDO13 Investigates from Bradley Tucker, the attorney representing the City in the declaratory judgment, shows in late February, Montano asked Tucker and the city for, “a clear answer on whether the city knows where his grandmother, and Florence’s mom, is buried. If we don’t know, we need to clarify whether we have any way of determining that.”
Tucker’s response was: “The city does not know where she is buried and has no way of determining that.”
It made Montano realize that he would likely never get the truth about his grandma’s body, and subsequently that his mother’s dying wish to be buried with her was never actually fulfilled.
“At least she knew that I tried,” said a teary-eyed Montano. “I don’t think anybody, even at this point, would believe any of this,” he later added.
How Did This All Happen?
KRDO13 Investigates spent weeks trying to get answers on behalf of Montano. Initially, we exchanged emails with La Junta City Manager Michael Hart, who originally agreed to an interview on March 13, 2025, to discuss the situation at the cemetery.
However, days later, Hart responded to our email again, to say that he was advised of the ongoing litigation, and that he could not speak about it any further.
From there, we continued to ask a number of questions via email, hoping to gain a more basic understanding of how this happened and give the City the opportunity to address claims made by Montano.
We then called and left messages for Hart twice. Once on March 26, 2025, and again on April 1, 2025. On those same days, we also called City Attorney Erin Harris– twice.
We even reached out via email to the Mayor of La Junta, Joe Ayala, to try and connect with Mr. Hart or Ms. Harris. He responded to our email, stating in part, “Michael and Erin should have a response for you soon regarding the specific concerns you’ve raised.” We never heard from them.
As a result, KRDO13 Investigates drove down to La Junta on April 2nd to try and speak with Mr. Hart. We happened to catch him out on a lunch break, just a few blocks from City Hall.
KRDO13 Investigates speaking with City Manager Michael Hart on April 2, 2025
We explained that we respected the integrity of the ongoing litigation, but wanted some answers at the very least, to give the city a fair opportunity to address how exactly this all happened.
Ultimately, Hart’s response was, “I’m going to have to ask other folks, because, again, I’ve been on the job now for about a month and a half,” stating that he had only taken office in early 2025, after the previous long-time city manager retired in 2024.
He said that he would take a look at the emails that we had sent to him, with our specific questions, and that he would try to answer them later that day, when we planned to circle back to City Hall.
When we arrived, we were told he was at the office but not available. Our cameras happened to spot him through an open doorway, standing just around the corner from our conversation with his secretary.
Mr. Hart emailed us back the following day, on April 3rd, asking for our questions in writing. We responded, and we have yet to hear back.
The Resolution:
Montano has continued to fight the stipulated orders, because he says he doesn’t want to settle the case, and allow the City to get away without answering for his grandma’ missing body.
“There is no price tag over someone’s memories, their loved ones, or their faith, and all of those have been trampled on by the city of La Junta, as far as I’m concerned,” said Montano.
Illustration of Bessie Zamora and her husband
He planned to hire an attorney to help do so, but after seeing how much it may cost him to litigate the situation, he reluctantly agreed to partake in a final April 16 court conference between the city and the two sisters to resolve the matter.
Montano says on April 17, the Otero County judge assigned to the case dismissed the Declaratory Judgement, since both he and the two sisters clarified that there was no dispute over who owned the plot.
Instead, the judge ordered the City of La Junta to pay for the removal of Flo’s remains and the removal of her and Bessie’s markers, which will be transferred into Montano’s possession. In addition, the city will also have to pay $700 towards the two sisters’ new headstone for their grandmother at Cavalry Cemetery.
Montano says those items will be brought to Roselawn Cemetery in Pueblo. He added that even once the paperwork was filed, there was never an apology by the city over his grandma’s misplacement.
“They are pretty disgusting people, honestly,” Montano said.