Overview

• Erin Scott O’Brien said her grandfather, U.S. Army veteran Charles Paddock Jr., kept the stone after serving in Italy, clarifying its path to New Orleans.
• O’Brien recalled using the slab as garden decor at her Carrollton home from 2003 and leaving it behind when she sold the property in 2018.
• Homeowners Daniella Santoro and Aaron Lorenz discovered the inscribed stone in March 2025 and sought scholarly review.
• Researchers led by University of New Orleans archaeologist D. Ryan Gray identified it as a second-century headstone for Sextus Congenius Verus and matched it to a Civitavecchia museum record missing since World War II.
• Santoro and Lorenz turned the artifact over to the FBI Art Crime Team, with formal repatriation under way and some details of the wartime-to-postwar chain of custody still uncertain.