A nearly 2,000-year-old Roman grave marker discovered in a New Orleans backyard has now been returned to Italy.
The marble epitaph – dating back roughly 1,900 years – was officially handed over to Italian officials in Rome on Wednesday during a ceremony led by the FBI. The event also marked the repatriation of another antiquity recovered in the US, the agency said.
The artifact first came to light last year when Tulane University anthropologist Danielle Santoro and her husband, Aaron Lorenz, were clearing undergrowth in their yard. The couple noticed a slab with an unusually smooth surface and a carved inscription that appeared to be in Latin.
Santoro reached out to experts, including the University of New Orleans archaeologist Ryan Gray, over concerns that their historic home might sit atop an unmarked burial site.
Further analysis, assisted by Tulane University’s classical studies professor Susann Lusnia and other specialists, revealed the stone to be a grave marker dedicated to Sextus Congenius Verus, a Roman sailor and military figure believed to have lived in the second century. The artifact also matched records of a piece reported missing from the city museum in Civitavecchia, near Rome.
Lusnia traveled to Civitavecchia to further investigate the epitaph’s origins. She discovered that the museum housing the artifact had been largely destroyed during the second world war and upon reopening in 1970, the museum had already lost most of its collection.
The mystery of how the stone ended up in New Orleans was eventually linked to Erin Scott O’Brien, the granddaughter of a US soldier. Speaking to outlets last year, O’Brien said her grandfather, Charles Paddock Jr, had kept the grave marker in a display case at his home in the city’s Gentilly neighborhood until his death in 1986.
O’Brien said she was unsure how Paddock obtained the stone but added that Paddock had served in Italy with the US army, married his wife there, and later returned to New Orleans to work as a voice teacher.
In a statement on Thursday the FBI said: “The FBI works with international partners to combat the illicit trafficking of cultural property … FBI New Orleans in turn relinquished the relic to a member of the FBI’s Art Crime Team in November 2025. Our FBI Law Enforcement Attaché Office in Rome communicated daily with Italian officials to coordinate the ultimate return of the items.”
It added: “The funerary stone was just one of many items returned yesterday under the US-Italy Cultural Property Agreement (CPA). The CPA with Italy is the nation’s oldest bilateral cultural property agreement with a European country. The agreement places import restrictions on Italian antiquities to disrupt the financing of criminal organizations as well as ensure Americans have access to Italian antiquities and archaeological sites for educational, cultural, and scientific purposes.”
Lusnia echoed similar sentiments, saying on Friday: “It is especially gratifying to know that this object will soon be home in the collection of the National Archaeological Museum of Civitavecchia. I think that those of us in New Orleans who experienced Hurricane Katrina understand the joy that accompanies the return of things that we thought were lost forever.”
“Cultural heritage is worth protecting … Every object returned builds trust and international cooperation, which I think is especially important now,” she added.
