Harry Sharp, the former Florida cemetery operator who came to Vicksburg to operate an antebellum bed and breakfast inn, has bid to buy the troubled Green Acres cemetery, and he has the secretary of state’s backing.

In a public sale Wednesday, Sharp, the state-appointed receiver, bid $135,000 in cash plus 10 percent of the burial ground’s pre-tax profits, the highest of three offers taken by Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann. It also includes about $51,000 for new roads and signs and a 30 percent discount on memorials, opening charges and vaults. After a financial review, the bid will be recommended to Chancellor Vicki Roach Barnes for official transfer “as quickly as possible,” Hosemann said.

Sharp was chosen by the state to run the 43-acre burial ground off U.S. 80 in March 2009, two months after the state filed suit against the cemetery’s Houston-based former owners, Mike Graham & Associates LLC, to track down more than $373,000 missing from its pre-need trust account that was supposed to hold funds paid for markers, vaults and other merchandise. It forced those who had held plots for years to pay for the items all over again. The inquiry involved the Attorney General’s Civil Litigation Division, but came up short of finding the missing money and no charges were filed against the former owners. The state tapped Sharp for the job due to his cemetery management experience in Florida before he purchased Duff Green Mansion and moved to Vicksburg in 1985.

“Our agency knew from the beginning of this mess, we could not make Green Acres whole,” Hosemann said in part of a statement. “Mr. Sharp’s generous bid on the property will no doubt provide some relief and stability to those who have loved ones buried in the cemetery.”

Upgrades to roads in and out of the cemetery, more landscaping and irrigation equipment is planned over the next 12 to 36 months, Sharp said when reached. A central office, formerly housed in a trailer that was repossessed three months before the inquiry officially started, will be re-established if a downtown building he owns at 1302 Washington St., next to Duff’s Tavern and Grille, can be retrofitted, he said.

In his pitch to the state during the bid process, Sharp proposed building standing monuments and a community mausoleum to complement flat, bronze markers — the latter of which he said he planned jointly more than 20 years ago with former owner Joe Varner but never realized.

“I’m very excited to be able to do things we weren’t able to do under the receivership,” Sharp said.

Sharp’s bid on the cemetery was picked over smaller bids from Magee-based Tutor Funeral Home, which bid successfully on Sunset Gardens Memorial Park in Laurel following a similar public sale in August, and from Vicksburg-based Skyhawk LLC, owned by Reliable Motors managers Bill Garmon and Darin Lambert.

When reached, both men said their interest in the cemetery was sparked by money lost on grave markers once Green Acres’ financial mess came to light. Garmon’s wife’s grandmother is buried there, as is both sets of Lambert’s grandparents.

“Harry Sharp’s been here a long time,” Garmon said. “I think he can do the job.”

Only $221.60 was in the pre-need account when Hosemann filed civil suit in January 2009 against Houston-based Mike Graham & Associates LLC, owner of the cemetery since 2001. Mike Graham died in 2007 and had apparently left daily operations of Green Acres and other cemeteries to his wife, Linda, and daughter, Stephanie, neither of whom responded to the state’s questions in person during the 19 months leading up to the court-ordered auction. One of Green Acres’ bank accounts in Mississippi was used as a clearing account to send money to the company’s other holdings, according to testimony given by the state.

Specifics of the bid call for about $37,000 of the $135,000 pledged on the cemetery to go to the state Tax Commission to settle back taxes for liens against the property. After expenses, the remaining portion will go to the perpetual care trust, as will more than $550,000 in insurance policies that belonged to Graham’s wife and daughter.

Laws enacted in 2009 created a “loss guarantee fund” into which $10 is deposited from every pre-need funeral contract sold in the state so any future pre-need contracts deemed worthless can be covered. It is managed by a five-person advisory board to which Sharp was appointed by Hosemann last December. Hosemann said statewide auditing of perpetual care funds has begun and 89 have filed necessary paperwork.

Seven other cemeteries in Mississippi were the subject of separate civil actions filed in 2009 by the Secretary of State’s Office, with Green Acres the most serious in terms of the total of missing money.

Bids on four of those were recommended for title transfer. Besides Sunset, they included bids of $1 each on Liberty Memorial Park in Booneville, by Liberty United Methodist Church, and Pinecrest Memorial Park in Pittsboro, by nonprofit Pinecrest of Calhoun County, and a $12,500 bid plus other considerations on Prentiss Memorial Gardens in Baldwyn by Waters Funeral Home. Tutor’s winning bid on Sunset was for $20,100 in cash.