LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - "Cults are one of the things we will look at," Capt. Rocky Melendez of the Pleasantville police department says. "We're looking into different angles of why someone would take someone's remains."

Between the night of July 26 and the early morning of July 27, thieves smashed the glass on the door of the mausoleum where Pauline Spinelli, along with three of her children and their spouses are buried.

Police believe the thieves used a sledge hammer to crack the marble slab that sealed the area.

"They then pushed that slab over, pulled the casket out, pried it open and removed the remains," Melendez said.

Granddaughter Paula Lafollette told ABCNews.com that the only item remaining in the coffin was the blanket used to cover Spinelli.

Lafollette says that the possibility that a satanic cult took her grandmother's remains for a ritual is highly probable.

"We did a lot of research and my husband found a group online that uses bodies in some kind of a ritual and they need the bones for their ritual. The group is called Palo. There were some bodies found in Newark and Woodbridge and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, speculated to have been used by this group," she said. "Who else would want a body?"

Palo is a religion that uses black magic and originated in the Caribbean.

Cult expert Rick Ross says that that a satanic ritual is highly unlikely to have been the reason why Spinelli's remains were stolen.

"The likelihood they would go into a mausoleum and drag out a body seems remote. Usually these hybrid religious groups [including Palo] use chicken and other animal bones," Ross said. "Typically these acts end up being individual perpetrators not linked to an organized group."

Lafollette says she still doesn't understand why someone would target her family mausoleum, which she said her grandmother built after the death of her first child.

"She wanted her family above ground and a place where she could go and just sit and visit," Lafollette said.

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