Graves dug up, sold for profit at Alsip cemetery

[scandal 951]

http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1659213...-070909.article

Four charged after graves dug up, sold for profit at Alsip cemetery

As many as 300 bodies were removed from grave sites at the historic Burr Oak Cemetery and dumped in a mass grave as part of a scam that netted four cemetery workers hundreds of thousands of dollars, authorities said today.

Four current and former cemetery employees were charged today with one count each of felony dismembering a human body: Carolyn Towns, 49, of the 7500 block of South Yates; Keith Nicks, 45, of the 900 block of W. 129th Place; his brother, Terrence Nicks, of the12800 block of South Morgan; and Maurice Dailey, 59, of Robbins.

Keith Nicks, an employees since 1992, was the foreman for the gravediggers, while his brother was a dumptruck operator. Dailey, an employee for 25 years, ran a backhoe, Mahoney said.

Cook County Judge Maria Kurikos-Cecil set bail at $250,000 for Towns, who was described as the ringleader in the scam, while the three men were held on $200,000 each.

"There should be a special place in hell for these graveyard thieves,’’ said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who appeared with authorities at a press conference at the cemetery today.

More people may yet be charged, the sheriff's office said. In addition, authorities said a fund set up in 2005 to build a memorial to 14-year-old murder victim Emmett Till — who is buried at the cemetery — was allegedly looted.

Sheriff Tom Dart said the scam took place for at least four years.

Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney John Mahoney said in court today that Towns allegedly took cash from families who came to the cemetery seeking to bury loved ones. She drew up paperwork on the new burials, and then later destroyed it so there would be no record of it.

She would then tell the three workers to exhume human remains from existing graves and put them in a mass grave on the northwest side of the cemetery, Mahoney said. Employees allegedly excavated entire burial sites — including the concrete vault that surrounds the coffin. The caskets and head stones were often smashed into pieces, officials said.

The workers appeared to have targeted older, unmarked graves that hadn’t been visited in a while, Dart spokesman Steve Patterson said. One grave that was dug up was of a baby that died in 1946, Patterson said. The headstone was smashed into pieces.

New bodies were then buried in the old plots, Mahoney said. Authorities also said some new bodies were “double-stacked’’ on top of bodies already buried in graves.

The sheriff’s office discovered lower jawbones containing teeth along with 29 other bones in the mass grave — an unkempt, unmarked grassy area, according to a bond proffer filed in court documents by prosecutors today. The bones have been sent to be tested.

One employee told prosecutors that he saw skulls and rib bones scattered in the area, documents indicate.

“He was aware that sometimes when the cement liner, coffin and corpse were removed in pieces . . . sometimes during transportation a bone will fall off the back of the truck and land on the ground or along the roadway,” the proffer said.

Authorities were first notified of the allegations when an attorney for the cemetery, Trudi Foushee, alerted them in May about the skeletal remains and said the facility was unable to account for some funds.

Foushee had been acting cemetery manager after Towns was removed from her positions in late March following allegations she stole $8,400 from the cemetery, prosecutors said.

Foushee represents Perpetua Inc., the company that owns the 150-acre Burr Oak. Company officials could not be reached.

Foushee was told about the bodies from a cemetery worker who noticed the skeletal remains in the northwest part of the cemetery when he was practicing his back-hoe skills, prosecutors said.

When he asked another groundskeeper about the bodies, the groundskeeper wouldn’t tell him anything and told him to stop excavating in that area, prosecutors said. Keith Nicks also allegedly instructed him and another worker to collect the bones and discard them in the “dump area,” the proffer says.

That worker said two or three times a month he saw Dailey and Terrence Nicks bury two people on top of one another at the direction of Keith Nicks. Nicks’ wife, Bertha, also works at the cemetery.

Public records show that Towns has filed for bankruptcy three times — in 2000, 2001 and 2002.

Terrence Nicks filed for bankruptcy in 2007, records show.

Family members of the four charged declined comment after the bond hearing. Towns’ lawyer, Steven Watkins, said his client was innocent.

“Somebody is making false, harmful accusations against my client,’’ he said.

Meanwhile, hundreds of people with loved ones buried at Burr Oak flocked to the cemetery at 4400 W. 127th St. Police blocked off a lane of 127th Street this morning to accommodate the people trying to find out whether their loved ones’ graves were affected. Many had to wait for hours because there were few cemetery workers on hand today and because the cemetery kept poor records, Dart said.

Florence Duerson said she has been “crying and crying’’ since seeing reports about the cemetery where her parents, Herman and Dorothy Graves, were buried.

“I couldn’t believe it,’’ Duerson said. “They said they found bones. Please, Lord, don’t let it be my mom or my dad.’’

Duerson said her family has run into problems at Burr Oak before. Dorothy died in 1981. More than two decades later, Herman paid for a grave site near his wife. On the day of his 2006 burial, cemetery officials told the family he was being buried on the opposite side of the cemetery.

Others said they noticed that headstones were missing from their family members’ graves.

Gloria Moss and her sister, Jacqueline Williams, both of Chicago’s West Side, came to check on the graves of their brothers, Ronald and Donald Deloach, and two uncles.

“If I pay for a plot and a headstone, why do I have to come back after 20 years?’’ Moss asked. “It should be here.”

Burr Oak was the Chicago region’s first black cemetery. In addition to Till, legendary blues singer Dinah Washington is also buried there. It’s unclear if the graves of any of the famous people have been desecrated, but Till’s grave is thought to remain intact, Dart said.

Residents with questions about Burr Oak are asked to call the sheriff’s department at (800) 942-1950.

Contributing: STNGWire, SouthtownStar

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Creeps. Have fun in jail.

[RubyWine 0]

May they rot in hell!!!

I'm lost for words at the sickness of this

[almaty 19]

savages

[HAL 9000 96]

Just wrong.

Saw this on WGN yesterday... I was like #######.

[Nagishkaw 510]

0h my Lawd!

[justashooter 430]

0h my Lawd!

and yet thousands of egyptians who exumed hundreds of thousands of mummified egyptian corpses to sell to the english built railroad in the delta for purpose of burning in the steam engined locomotives in the 1860-1885 period were never criticised...pine tar preservatives burn so well.