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Author Topic: Bodies dug up from cemetery, dismembered & graves resold-near Chicago  (Read 4419 times)
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MuffyBee
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« on: July 09, 2009, 02:27:01 PM »

We have a forum for crimes against children, elderly and disabled.  But here is a crime against those no longer living.   

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6521007.html
Black cemetery's graves dug up for resale of plots

Associated Press
July 9, 2009, 11:22A

A pile of stone, which police say is made up of broken-up burial vaults and headstones, sits near a grave in Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois. Police suspect more than 100 graves could have been dug up in the historic cemetery over the last several years and the bodies dumped in the rear of the burial ground so the graves could be resold by the cemetery management.

Start of article:
ALSIP, Ill. — Four cemetery workers have been charged with dismembering bodies after police found what they called “startling and revolting” conditions at a historic cemetary near Chicago.

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart says workers at the Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip allegedly dug up more than 100 graves, dumped the bodies into unmarked mass graves and resold the plots to unsuspecting members of the public.

The three men and one woman were charged Thursday with one count each of dismembering a human body.

Burr Oak is the final resting place of many famous African-Americans, including lynching victim Emmett Till, blues singers Willie Dixon, Dinah Washington and Otis Spann, as well as Harlem Globetrotter Inman Jackson.

Charles Eric Young speaks with a police officer at the gate of Burr Oak Cemetery as he tries to get information about his parents' graves.
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« Reply #1 on: July 11, 2009, 09:04:47 AM »

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CEMETERY_DESECRATION?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US
Jul 11, 8:19 AM EDT

More bones found, Ill. cemetery closed to public

By KAREN HAWKINS
Associated Press Writer 
 ALSIP, Ill. (AP) -- Distraught families hoping to determine whether loved ones' final resting places at a historic black cemetery near Chicago were desecrated in a gravedigging scandal were met with more gruesome discoveries: additional human bones strewn about the grounds.

Thousands have flooded Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, the burial place of civil rights-era lynching victim Emmett Till and blues singer Dinah Washington, since four former workers were accused earlier this week of dumping hundreds of unearthed corpses in a scheme to resell plots. Each was charged with one count of dismembering a body.
<snipped>
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« Reply #2 on: July 14, 2009, 08:52:07 PM »

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g_e_fmZCCG4K9wX0arcCdNia07IQD99EHTQG0
Records at troubled Chicago cemetery falling apart
July 14, 2009
By RUPA SHENOY
BRIDGEVIEW, Ill. (AP) — Records at the suburban Chicago cemetery where four people are accused of unearthing bodies in an alleged moneymaking scheme have been found disintegrating and rotting in a rusty file cabinet, authorities said Tuesday.

The condition of records at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip illustrates the daunting task ahead of identifying the dead whose graves have been disturbed. Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said Tuesday that he'd received about 65,000 requests from families seeking information about loved ones buried there.

Meanwhile, Dart said at a news conference that he's asking a court to appoint someone to run Burr Oak, where four former workers allegedly dug up bodies and resold the burial plots.

Dart said he is effectively running the historic African-American cemetery. He said employees have been asking him when they can take their lunch and leave for the day.

"There is nobody running the cemetery right now other than me," Dart said. "That obviously is not what should be going on here."

The sheriff said the Arizona-based owner, Perpetua Holdings, has made no move to reopen or operate the cemetery.

Next to Dart at the news conference stood a rusty gray file cabinet that the sheriff said had been discovered in a basement. Inside were rotting, moldy cards with fading writing.

Dart's comments come as authorities are continuing the monumental task of trying to identify who is buried in about 100,000 graves in the suburban cemetery. The sheriff said most of the graves don't have markers.

In the meantime, at least one lawsuit has been filed on behalf of families, and Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes has started the process of revoking Burr Oak's license.

Hynes proposed legislation Tuesday in Springfield to tighten cemetery regulation, including first-time state licensing for cemeteries and their staff members. Action on the six-part plan could come as early as Wednesday.

The measure would require cemeteries to provide reasonable maintenance, keep detailed records and maps of burials documented with the county recorder of deeds and provide plain-language information to consumers about their rights.
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« Reply #3 on: August 28, 2009, 12:09:56 PM »

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_EMMETT_TILL_CASKET?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US
Aug 28, 12:03 PM EDT

Lynching victim Till's casket to go to Smithsonian

By DON BABWIN
Associated Press Writer

AP Photo/M. Spencer Green

CHICAGO (AP) -- A casket that helped trigger the civil rights movement and decades later was discarded like trash is now heading to the Smithsonian Institution.

On the very spot where in 1955 the brutalized remains of 14-year-old Emmett Till were put on display in Chicago, his family on Friday announced plans to give the casket to the Washington D.C. museum complex.

"Part of the responsibility of a national museum is to help people to remember, and through this donation we will ensure that future generations will remember how the death of a child, a mother's courage, helped to transform America," said Lonnie Bunch, the director of the Smithsonian's planned National Museum of African American History and Culture.

The news conference at the church on Chicago's South Side follows last month's discovery of the tattered, dented and rusty casket in a garbage-strewn storage shed at a suburban cemetery where former workers are charged with digging up corpses and reselling burial plots.

The former workers are not accused of disturbing Till's grave. However, while detectives were investigating the cemetery desecration, they found Till's casket that had been pulled from the ground when his body was exhumed in 2005 as part of an investigation into his death. Till's body was then buried in another casket and the family was told the original casket would be kept for a memorial.

Friday marks 54 years since Till, who was black, was killed in Mississippi for whistling at a white woman. His casket was put on display and photographed at the funeral. Photographs of his battered body in the coffin were shown around the world and became powerful images of the civil rights movement.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson has said that Till's killing and his mother's decision to show his remains helped convince Rosa Parks a few months later not to give up her seat in a public bus in Montgomery, Ala. - a decision that became one of the most significant acts of defiance in American history.

Bunch said the casket, with its clear glass top that allowed people to see Till's body is an important historical artifact.

"The casket itself was part of the story," he said. Further, Bunch said, there is no understating the importance of what Mamie Till-Mobley did when she put placed her son's open casket in Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ.

"This is partly a way to pay homage to Mrs. Mobley, her courage to demand that the world look at this," said Bunch, who came to know her when he was president of what is now called the Chicago History Museum. "And this is an incident that really reawakened the civil rights movement.

Bunch said he heard about the casket's damage the same way everyone else did: When news broke that it was found at Burr Oak Cemetery, a historic black cemetery in Alsip, just outside Chicago.

He said he initially called the Till family to offer any help. He soon realized that not only did the casket need to be preserved, but that the best place for it was the Smithsonian's African American museum that is scheduled to open in 2015.

Bunch said experts inspected the casket and told him it could be salvaged, but it would take months of work.

He does not know exactly how the casket will be displayed in the museum, but Bunch said he wants to be careful that it is not done in a way that turns it into just a curiosity.

"This should be an object that challenges us, it should be an object that makes us think (and) not just be seen as a spectacle," he said.
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« Reply #4 on: September 08, 2009, 05:27:34 PM »

http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/national/midwest/nat_ap_chicago_4_cemetery_desecration_suspects_plead_not_guilty_200909081324_2847168
4 cemetery suspects
plead not guilty
The four face several felony charges
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  " Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."  - Daniel Moynihan
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