Stephanie Marie Graham was born in Decatur, Ala., in 1977 and has lived in the Houston suburb of Spring, Texas, for at least 10 years.

That may be the lone fact the State of Mississippi can pull out of her as civil and criminal cases in a probe of missing funds at Green Acres Memorial Park drag into an eighth month.

Graham has not appeared in Warren County Chancery Court to address questions of financial mismanagement in a complaint filed by Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann in January detailing more than $373,000 found missing from the cemetery’s pre-need trust account.

Instead, Graham has responded by mail to 45 questions and requests posed by Hosemann’s office. Besides her name, age and address, Graham has offered few specifics on what happened at the U.S. 80 cemetery between its purchase in 2001 by her father’s firm, Mike W. Graham & Associates LLC, and when assets were seized by the state in January as part of the investigation.

In court papers sent to the state Attorney General’s Office, Graham objected to nearly all questions dealing with the financial records, personnel and corporate status of the cemetery’s holding company on the basis that such requests were “unduly vague, conclusory, overly broad in scope and lacks specificity” and that responding to them “is unduly burdensome, if not impossible.”

Her employment was limited to clerical duties, with no authority on the operation of Green Acres or other cemeteries in several states owned by her father’s company, according to a response filed Aug. 4 on her behalf by attorney Ken Rector of Wheeless, Shappley, Bailess & Rector, a Vicksburg firm. However, records have shown her signature appeared on papers in October 2005 agreeing to file annual reports with the state in accordance with Mississippi’s Pre-Need Act.

Graham named co-defendant Yolanda Horne and James Horne as officials of Green Acres who sold or marketed pre-need or perpetual care services, merchandise, burial plots or contracts. When asked whether either could be claimed responsible for any depleted or deficient funds, Graham said in her mailed response that she “has no knowledge of any actions by any person that resulted in any alleged or depleted funds.

Co-defendants Linda Graham, the widow of Mike Graham, and Janice Tubbs, the Houston-based employee identified in the state’s testimony as having oversight of the pre-need trust account at the time of the probe, appear in recent court briefs. Graham would not give a phone number for her mother to Hosemann’s office, only a Houston mailing address. Graham said she had no documents or financial accounts of any type where Tubbs has or had an interest at any time between January 2001 and the present. Also named as defendants in the civil probe are Donald R. Hughes and A.M. Brewer, who managed several Graham-owned properties in Alabama.

The cemetery was put into receivership in March, with local bed and breakfast owner Harry Sharp tapped by the state to oversee the entirety of its operations. Previous holders of plots have had to pay a second time for pre-need cemetery merchandise such as markers and vaults, though at discounted rates. Rates on markers have been cut if purchased from Green Acres. Sharp has said operating cash is being rebuilt, with long-range plans to include a crematorium and a mausoleum.

Seven other cemeteries in Mississippi were the subject of separate civil actions by the Secretary of State’s Office, with Green Acres the most serious in terms of the total of missing funds. Four had assets seized this week, with an arrest warrant issued for Rogers Memorial Management Group, its Alabama-based ownership group.

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Contact Danny Barrett Jr. at dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com