Two arrested after Jefferson Davis memorial stolen from Alabama cemetery

Two people have been arrested and the police have recovered a stone chair dedicated to Confederate president Jefferson Davis that was stolen from an Alabama cemetery.

The New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) said in a statement it arrested Stanley Warnick and Kathryn Diionno in connection to the incident, CNN reported. Along with the arrests, the chair dedicated to Davis was also recovered Thursday.

Diionno and Warnick are being charged with possession of stolen property in New Orleans, but are already out on bail, the police statement says. The police are also looking for another person they believe was involved in the theft.

The Dallas County Sheriff’s Office in Alabama asked the NOPD for help with the investigation after the chair was stolen from the Old Live Oak Cemetery in Selma, Ala., in March.

“They are small business owners and community members. They are, if anything, themselves victims of mistakes of fact that have led to this unfortunate situation,” attorneys Michael Kennedy and Miles Swanson told CNN. “They look forward to clearing their names and disassociating their names from any criminal activity.”

A group calling itself “White Lies Matter” previously took responsibility for the stolen chair, which is worth $500,000. 

The group said it would not give the chair back unless the United Daughters of the Confederacy were allowed to hang a big banner outside their headquarters with a quote from a Black Liberation Army activist wanted for the murder of a New Jersey state trooper in 1973.

White Lies Matter threatened that failure to meet their demands would “result in the monument, an ornate stone chair, immediately being turned into a toilet.”

The Hill has reached out to NOPD and Dallas County Sheriff’s Office for comment.