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Jul 11, 2009 10:15 pm US/Central
Bones Found Near 'Babyland' Area Of Ill. Cemetery
Cook County Sheriff: As Many As 300 Graves Were Disturbed By Staff
ALSIP, Ill. (CBS) ―
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Tiffany Robinson stands outside the gate of Burr Oak Cemetery hoping to receive information about her cousin's grave July 8, 2009, in Alsip, Illinois.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
Distraught families descended Burr Oak Cemetery outside of Chicago Saturday seeking answers in an alleged scheme to sell graveyard plots. They were barred from searching the grounds, however, after human bones were found strewn around and new evidence surfaced that an area of the cemetery known as "babyland" may have been tampered with, CBS station WBBM-TV reported.
"Baby land," was a particularly poorly documented part of the cemetery, Burr Oak Cemetery officials said. They discovered new evidence of unearthed human remains near the section over the weekend.
Gail Cooper says she can't find her daughter, who was buried in "babyland."
"I had trusted her to these people," Cooper said. "How could you have someone so shady and underhanded to do something like this?"
Cooper fears her daughter is no longer resting in peace.
"To think that they might have taken her and threw her in the corner like she was a piece of trash -- that was my baby," she said.
The cemetery is the burial place of civil rights-era lynching victim Emmett Till and blues singer Dinah Washington.
Four former Burr Oak Cemetery workers have been charged in an alleged scheme to resell graveyard plots. Each was charged with one count of dismembering a body.
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said Friday night he will close Burr Oak Cemetery for an estimated five to seven days so that investigators can examine the property as a massive crime scene.
"I found bones out there; I found individuals wandering aimlessly around" who also found bones and other things, Dart said. He did not offer details.
Families will be allowed to file inquiries at the cemetery Saturday. The cemetery is expected to reopen in about one week, WBBM-TV reported.
Shareese McLemore, 36, of Kankakee, Ill., was able to visit before the cemetery closed Friday and said she fears her mother's grave was disturbed after she found grass around the plot damaged and burnt.
"I feel betrayed by the people who worked there," McLemore said.
About 5,000 grave sites were being investigated, but officials acknowledged difficulty in evaluating the number because cemetery records either don't exist or have been altered or destroyed.
"We can't get our arms around how many people are supposedly, allegedly, buried here,"
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said Friday.
Dart's office has received more than 1,350 complaints — up to 30 percent of which allege loved ones have been relocated.
Anxious families have been coming to the cemetery in droves, many of them in tears or raising their voice in fury.
While Till's grave site was not disturbed, police said investigators found his original iconic glass-topped casket rusting in a shack at the cemetery. The inside of the casket was shredded by wild animals living in it, police said.
Till was killed in 1955 after reportedly whistling at a white woman during a visit to his uncle's house in Mississippi. Nearly 100,000 people visited the casket during a four-day public viewing in Chicago, and images of the 14-year-old's battered body helped spark the civil rights movement.
When Till was exhumed in 2005 during an investigation of his death, he was reburied in a new casket. The original casket was supposed to be kept for a planned memorial.
One of Till's cousin's said she was appalled the casket was found in such poor condition.
"It's part of history, it's part of our trying to put a family to rest," Ollie Gordon said Friday during a visit to the cemetery.
Authorities said three former gravediggers and a former cemetery manager made about $300,000 in the scheme that stretched back at least four years. The four sold existing deeds and plots to unsuspecting customers, authorities said. They then allegedly dug up hundreds of corpses and either dumped them in a weeded, vacant area of the or double-stacked them in graves.
Dart said long before the most recent scandal, one grieving relative launched a one-man crusade against Burr Oak conditions, claiming one of his parents' coffins was too close to the surface. Alsip officials investigated, agreed, and are allowing the man to remove his loved one's remains Saturday.
While the exhumation is not connected to this week's charges, Dart noted the coffin's proximity to the surface raises the possibility the remains were stacked.
The suspects, who were being held on bond, were former cemetery manager Carolyn Towns, 49; Keith Nicks, 45; Terrence Nicks, 39; and Maurice Dailey, 61.
A spokeswoman for the Cook County state's attorney's office said Towns is being represented by a private attorney, but she didn't know the name. The Cook County public defender's office said it was representing the three other defendants but did not have attorneys' names. Attempts to reach family members were unsuccessful.
The cemetery's Arizona-based owner, Perpetua Inc., is cooperating with authorities.
(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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