CANTON, Mass. (AP) – Patrick Holland won a groundbreaking legal battle last year to “divorce” his father for murdering his mother. Since then, he’s been trying to get his mother’s cremated remains from his maternal grandfather, the administrator of Liz Holland’s estate.

But after a brief hearing Monday, the grandfather said he had already disposed of his daughter’s ashes. Robert McCrocklin, of Quicksburg, Va., declined to say where they were, but said he would talk directly to Patrick about it, if given the opportunity.

“I scattered her ashes in a peaceful place,” McCrocklin said.

Patrick’s adoptive father, Ron Lazisky, of Sandown, N.H., said he didn’t believe McCrocklin had scattered the ashes. He said he had information from family members that as recently as a year ago, McCrocklin kept his daughter’s ashes in his bedroom.

Lazisky said McCrocklin also was told by a Norfolk County Probate Court judge in June that the ashes should go to Patrick, now 15, and McCrocklin said nothing about no longer having them.

McCrocklin could not be reached for further comment Monday afternoon, as he was traveling back to Virginia, according to the lawyer for the estate, Steven Wollman.

“If Mr. McCrocklin says he disposed of the ashes, why would he lie about that?” Wollman said. “If (Lazisky) chooses not to believe that, there’s not a lot that I can do.”

Lazisky said he would press ahead with his motion to compel McCrocklin to produce the ashes, which is scheduled to be heard Oct. 14 – seven years and one day after Liz Holland was murdered by her estranged husband, Daniel. Patrick, who was 8 at the time, found his mother’s body the next morning in their Quincy home.

Still, Lazisky said he isn’t optimistic.

“Right now, the way I feel is I have to tell Patrick eventually that his mother’s gone forever, and that’s going to crush this little boy’s heart. I can’t believe his grandfather would do such a thing,” he said.

Monday’s hearing was on Lazisky’s motion for contempt against McCrocklin, who filed an accounting of his daughter’s estate more than a month late. In his accounting, McCrocklin said the expenses of administering the estate and money his daughter owed him totaled $19,763, more than the estate’s estimated value of $18,877.

Lazisky has challenged the accounting and most of McCrocklin’s claims on the estate, which he believes McCrocklin undervalued. He noted that no receipts, IOUs or records of the sale of the house were included. However, he had previously offered to drop all financial claims in exchange for the ashes.

McCrocklin agreed to file a complete accounting with receipts in a month. A new hearing was scheduled for Dec. 14.

Meanwhile, McCrocklin gave two sealed boxes of his daughter’s personal effects to his lawyer to mail to Patrick. The lawyer said he did not know what was in the boxes.

Patrick’s great-uncle on his father’s side, William Sullivan of Richmond, N.H., also gave him a box of his mother’s belongings last week. Included were her high school yearbooks, awards she’d won in school, her prom pictures, and Mother’s Day cards Patrick made for her when he was in first and second grade, Lazisky said.

“Patrick went through the box when we got home and I have never seen him look so excited – it was like Christmas morning,” Lazisky said.

AP-ES-09-19-05 1730EDT