Cemetery workers in grisly plot
2009-07-10 13:00
Sophia Tareen
Illinois - Three gravediggers and a cemetery manager unearthed hundreds of corpses from a historic black cemetery south of Chicago, dumping some in a weeded area and double-stacking others in existing graves, in an elaborate scheme to resell the plots, authorities said on Thursday. All four were charged with felonies.
Frantic relatives of the deceased descended on Burr Oak Cemetery - the final resting place of lynching victim Emmett Till and blues singers Willie Dixon and Dinah Washington - in hopes someone could tell them their loved ones' remains were not among the pile of bones that littered a remote area of the property in Alsip, 19km south of Chicago.
Some found apparently undisturbed plots, but others wandered, unable to locate loved ones.
"This is a mess. We can't find our people," said Ralph Gunn, 54, of Chicago, who filled out a report for authorities after a futile search for the headstones of his brother and nephew.
Others cried and clutched cemetery maps as they waited for a chance to look themselves. They listened as Sheriff Tom Dart said the displacement of bodies "was not done in a very delicate way," and that remains were dumped haphazardly, littered with shards of coffins. For graves stacked on top of each other, Dart said it appears they "pounded the other one down and put someone on top".
A visibly shaken Rev Jesse Jackson voiced the mounting anger at those who would toss the bones of the dead like trash.
"In my judgment, there should be no bail for them, there should be really a special place in hell for these graveyard thieves who have done so much, hurt these families," he said.
Pocketed donations
Dart's office said hundreds of families sought help finding plots in the 60-hectare cemetery, where as many as 1000 burials are held a year, and about 30 reported "suspect or questionable burial sites" on Thursday. Officials took phone numbers and told family members they would call within 72 hours. Dart said it could take his office and the FBI months to fully understand what took place.
The suspects, all of whom are black, were identified as Carolyn Towns, 49, Keith Nicks, 45, and Terrence Nicks, 39 - all of Chicago - and Maurice Dailey, 61, of Robbins. They each have been charged with one count of dismembering a human body, a felony.
Bond was set at $250 000 for Towns, the cemetery's manager, and at $200 000 for the other three.
Authorities said Towns also pocketed donations she elicited for an Emmett Till memorial museum. She has not been charged in connection with those allegations. Court documents show she was fired from the cemetery in late May amid allegations of financial wrongdoing.
Cook County state's attorney's office spokesperson Tandra Simonton said Towns is being represented by a private attorney, but Simonton did not know the attorney's name. The Cook County public defender's office said it had not yet assigned attorneys to the other three cases.
The investigation was prompted in May, when a groundskeeper discovered skeletal remains in the part of the cemetery that wasn't supposed to be used, and cemetery officials notified Alsip police. Around the same time, the cemetery's Arizona-based owner, Perpetua Inc, called Cook County authorities to report the alleged financial wrongdoing.
Towns allegedly took cash for new graves, then instructed the three gravediggers to empty existing plots and move the remains inside to an unused part of the cemetery covered with chest-high grass and dotted with trees.
- SAPA