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Boy, 7, who starved to death has no headstone

Myung Oak Kim, Rocky Mountain News

Published September 10, 2007 at midnight

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Four months after his horrifying death, 7-year-old Chandler Grafner lies in a grave without a headstone.

The site bears a temporary gray metal marker with his name, birth date and death date in typewritten letters. Tucked in the Guardian Angel section of Mount Olivet Cemetery in Wheat Ridge, the marker is flanked by a doll, two balls, a toy bucket and a cross.

Josh Norris, the boy's biological father, told the Rocky Mountain News this week that the family doesn't yet have enough money to buy a headstone.

"We're working on getting it paid for," he said.

In the meantime, scores of strangers have created an online tribute to the boy.

Chandler weighed just 30 pounds when he died of cardiac arrest May 6 while living in the south Denver home of Jon Phillips, who has been referred to as the boy's stepfather, and Phillips' common-law wife, Sarah Berry. Phillips, 26, and Berry, 21, have been charged with murder and are awaiting trial. Authorities allege the couple locked the boy in a closet and starved him to death.

Chandler had bounced among numerous homes and had been on child welfare workers' radar for almost three years before his death.

Michael Wright, director of Mount Olivet Cemetery, said he conducted the boy's funeral for free and the government helped pay for burial. Chandler is in a section for children only. Almost all the other children have headstones, Wright said.

The online tribute to Chandler was started by Patricia Farrell, who lives in Queens, N.Y. Farrell said she has no personal connection to the boy, but decided to start a Web page after she learned of his death through a crime publication.

"I was just very incensed that a beautiful child like that, that had all the chances in the world . . . had so many strikes against him," she said in a phone interview. "They left him with a man . . . who starved him to death."

Two weeks after the boy's death, Farrell posted photos of the boy and a story about him on Findagrave.com.

Arvada resident Nancy Walser, another stranger, took a photo of the boy's grave and posted it on the site.

"I feel sad about the entire thing, and I think it's just wretched that someone would do that to a child," Walser said.

Since then, more than 100 people have posted messages and images of hearts, angels, flowers and other mementos.

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