Family has Savile's headstone destroyed

LONDON, Oct. 10 (UPI) -- A 4-foot-tall headstone has been removed from the grave of disgraced British TV personality Jimmy Savile at the request of his family, cemetery officials said.

The BBC presenter died last year at the age of 84. He has since been accused by numerous women of sexually abusing them when they were young teens. Police are investigating the matter and say Savile may have assaulted as many as 25 young girls over five decades.

Savile is buried at Woodlands Cemetery in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. His grave was marked by a triple, 6-foot-wide granite headstone, which bore the epitaph, "It was good while it lasted" in Gothic lettering.

His family released a statement to The Guardian, saying they had requested it be dug up and destroyed.

"Out of respect to public opinion, to those who are buried there, and to those who tend their graves and visit there, we have decided to remove it," the statement said.

The marker was destroyed overnight Tuesday.

"We started just after 11 p.m. and finished going on 1 a.m. We were concerned about the amount of people who might turn up if we left it until morning," funeral director Robert Morphet told the newspaper.

"We decided it was going to be done before then and brought our own lights and generators. The grave will now be ground down so the inscription is totally wiped and will be destroyed. It will be broken up, placed in a skip and used as landfill. For the foreseeable future the grave will remain unmarked. The family will decide at some future point about what to do," Morphet said, regarding whether another marker will be installed at the site. "There were no family present. They did not know we were going to do it in the night. But we wanted it to be discreet."