Vandals have toppled 41 tombstones in Thompson by the count of police, who said the crime took place sometime between Feb. 28 and March 6.
"They've hurt people," said Dave Babbitt, a former first selectman of Thompson whose great-grandparents' tombstone was knocked over. "They've hurt relatives of the people buried here."
Lutheran Cemetery sits along Riverside Drive in the North Grosvenordale section of Thompson, across the Quinebaug River from Emmanuel Lutheran Church, which owns the cemetery.
State police are investigating the vandalism.
Babbitt figures it happened last weekend because the women who discovered the damage reported finding footprints in the snow.
