Exclusive: Emmett Till's casket left to waste at Burr Oak
Cemetery debacle grows worse with discovery of coffin of civil rights icon
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July 10, 2009
BY MARY MITCHELL Sun-Times Columnist
Broken. Rusted. Battered. The image of a glass-covered casket with the body of Emmett Till was shown around the world in the 1950s. But on Thursday, as hundreds of African Americans searched frantically for the graves of love ones, the battered casket of Till was rusting in the back of a shack at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip.
The casket was surrounded by garbage and discarded headstones strewn about like litter.
The original coffin that had contained Emmett Louis Till (inset) was found at Burr Oak Cemetery Thursday in an old work area. The original casket was supposed to be part of a planned memorial for Till at Burr Oak Cemetery.
(Scott Stewart/Sun-Times, AP
"When we opened it up trying to find what we have, a family of possums ran out," said Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart.
Cemetery workers had been cooperative and informed law enforcement officials that it was indeed Till's original casket.
"It sure looks like all of the photos I have ever seen," Dart said. "This is absolutely horrible."
In June 2005, Till's body was exhumed during an investigation of his death. As is customary, he was not reburied in the same casket.
The original casket was supposed to be part of a planned memorial for Till at Burr Oak Cemetery, but the donations for that memorial were allegedly pocketed by a woman who has been charged in this ghoulish scheme.
Till, 14, was kidnapped and murdered after he whistled at a white woman in 1955 in Mississippi. The lynching of the Chicago youth helped spark the civil rights movement. A picture of his severely mutilated face was shown around the world.
His original casket is symbolic of the condition of the battered condition of the cemetery.
Officers raided the cemetery at 4400 W. 127th St. in Alsip on Wednesday morning.
Four people, including Carolyn Towns -- the woman who was supposed to set up the Till memorial -- were charged with one count of dismemberment of a human body.
The other charged employees were Keith Nicks, 45; Terrence Nicks, 39, and Maurice Dailey, 59.
Throughout the day, Cook County sheriff's deputies ferried anxious family members to grave sites in buses ordinarily used to take inmates to Cook County Jail.
The landscape in some sections of the cemetery was dotted with orange utility flags that some people mistakenly thought indicated desecrated graves.
But beyond the grassy areas at Burr Oak, hidden by a wall of high weeds and buried under mounds of dirt, is the nightmare that all of these African Americans were praying they were spared.
The Cook County sheriff's office now estimates that about 300 bodies were dumped in the rear of Burr Oak, in an area that is about the size of three football fields.
Knowing what was out there was a heavy burden etched in the faces of the people who were waiting for answers.
Carolyn Singleton of Chicago sat in a folding chair outside of the cemetery's office building, where people were lined up seeking information about plot locations.
She had arrived at Burr Oak at 11 a.m. It was about 3 p.m., and she was still clutching No. 379.
Singleton told me she was looking for the grave sites of seven family members: her grandmother, two aunts, two uncles, a cousin, and her fiance's mother.
"This is like having a funeral all over again," she said. "My fiance's family is calling from out of town trying to get information. All this is giving me a headache."
I have to give Dart credit for the way he has handled this unprecedented catastrophe.
Although the cemetery's owners said they would attend a news conference at the cemetery, they failed to show. With most of the employees under arrest, the Cook County Sheriff 's Department is essentially running the cemetery.
Sheriff's deputies drove worried families back and forth to sections of the cemetery to look for plots.
Armed detectives took information from distraught people who either could not find their loved one's grave site or discovered something was amiss.
Other employees with the Cook County sheriff's office passed out cold bottled water and even emptied garbage containers.
Although the process for locating plots was indeed slow, people were unbelievably patient, and sheriff's deputies were sensitive.
The Rev. Steve Jones, a chaplain for the sheriff's office and president of the Baptist Pastors Conference, was one of the people driving distressed survivors to grave sites.
Jones was thankful that Dart advised the clergy about the disaster before going public. He believes that decision helped bring an element of dignity to a situation that could have been chaotic.
"It wouldn't have been fair to exclude funeral homes or fair to pastors, not to be prepared for a catastrophe of this magnitude," Jones said.
"The fact is every black person in Chicago has a tie to this cemetery. When they took us to the crime scene, I walked over bones," he said.
"This whole thing makes the bereavement experience fresh. To even think your loved one's remains might not be in place. . . it really breaks my heart."
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Showing posts with label GHOULS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GHOULS. Show all posts
Friday, July 10, 2009
Thursday, July 9, 2009
DESPICABLE !!!!!!!!!!!
4 charged with dismembering cemetery bodies
July 9, 2009 12:15 PM | 110 Comments | UPDATED STORY
Cook County Sheriff's Police Chief DeWayne Holbrook greets a woman at the entrance of Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip. Relatives of those buried there came today looking for answers. (David Pierini/Chicago Tribune)
Four people have been charged after authorities discovered that dozens of bodies had been dug up at the historic Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip and the grave sites illegally resold.
Each was charged with one count of dismembering a human body, a Class X felony. They were identified as Carolyn Towns, 49, Keith Nicks, 45, and Terrence Nicks, 39, all of Chicago, and Maurice Dailey, 59, of Robbins. They will appear in Central Bond Court at 11:45 a.m.
An arrest warrant was also issued Tuesday for a fifth person, a 45-year-old woman who was a secretary at the cemetery, according to Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Brittney Blair. But the woman was not charged after investigators became convinced that she did not profit from the scheme and was only carrying out orders from Towns, who was the office manager.
"Carolyn Towns was the brains behind the operation, the one calling the shots," Blair said.
Detectives discovered a pile of bones -- from more than 100 bodies -- decomposed, above ground and uncovered in an overgrown, fenced-off portion of the cemetery, according to Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart.
In addition, bodies apparently were double-buried in already existing plots, Dart told WGN-AM 720 this morning. Dozens of FBI agents are expected in Chicago early next week to help sift through the evidence at the cemetery, Dart said.
The charges against Towns allege that "numerous graves were excavated and the human remains were then buried in a rear vacant lot in Burr Oak cemetery, Alsip ... She then sold the vacant gravesites for her own personal financial gain."
One of the first predominantly African-American cemeteries in the area, Burr Oak is the resting place of many historic figures, including civil rights symbol Emmett Till, blues legend Dinah Washington and heavyweight boxing champion Ezzard Charles.
Dart said he was certain Till's remains were not disturbed, but he could not be sure about the others.
This morning, a large crowd converged on the cemetery, most of them African-American, saying they wanted to find out if their loved ones' remains had been moved. The families expressed outrage, disgust and discouragement.
Dart said this morning that none of the cemetery's workers came to work today, so the sheriff's office was aiding residents walk through the plots.
"This is just heartbreaking. The people I have talked to have made me want to cry," Dart said. "The sense of violation is horrible."
"Some people come back from the grave site and it's not what it's supposed to be and I don't know what to tell them," he said.
Sheriff's employees are having concerned families first take a number. When their number comes up, they are taken to the site. But the wait is long so Dart's office has brought out chairs for the elderly as well as water, drinks and chips for relatives.
Some people who know where the location of their loved ones' graves are just heading to them on their own.
Dart said he believes the alleged scheme has been going on for about four years.
"We have evidence...There were also people being double-buried, that they would just sort of pound down the one casket or remains and put another set of remains on top," he told WGN-AM.
The disinterred graves appeared to be older, neglected ones, Dart said. "They specifically looked to older graves, where there might not be someone coming out there every week," he said.
He believes the alleged scheme has been going on for about four years.
"We have evidence...There were also people being double-buried, that they would just sort of pound down the one casket or remains and put another set of remains on top," he told WGN-AM Radio.
Dart said it would take weeks, if not months, before it will be known who the bodies are. Between 30 and 40 FBI agents "from all over the world" who specialize in identifying remains will arrive on Monday to work on the case, he told WGN-AM. It will take four or five weeks to sift through the area in the cemetery in which the bodies were dumped and which has been fenced off as the main crime scene, Dart said.
No remains have been removed yet, Dart said. The bones were scattered above ground, along with casket and other related debris, over an area of about four blocks in a hilly portion of the cemetery. There's a lot of overgrown vegetation there, he said, and the area stretches from Kostner to Cicero Avenues.
The FBI is conducting tests to determine the identities, but Dart said he was not familiar with their methods. He said it was possible not all bodies would be identified. Compounding the problem, many cemetery records appear to have been destroyed.
Dart said people have complained about the cemetery for months and have not received any answers. The families have complained specifically of flooding and even markers being moved. The Tribune in May wrote about the cemetery and residents' complaints.
Simeon Wright of the La Grange area, a cousin of Till, said: "This is reprehensible if it's true. I've got several generations of my family buried there, and I've never had any problems. ... But this is a pretty ghoulish story."
On Wednesday night, as news of the grim discovery spread, devastated families started trickling onto the cemetery grounds to check on their loved ones' graves.
Donetta Newman, 35, whose father and both of her grandparents are buried at Burr Oak, stood in the rain trying to get inside to see if their grave sites had been disturbed. "You always think this is the final resting place," she said. "This is just shocking. I'm very distraught."
None of the remains had been removed from the site, said Steve Patterson, a sheriff's spokesman. The state's attorney's office and FBI are also investigating, Dart said.
In recent years the cemetery at 4400 W. 127th St. has drawn complaints for overgrown grass, sunken grave sites and flooding.
Police told industry experts, consulted as they investigated the case, that the conspirators probably took in around $300,000.
Sheriff's police learned of the grave-reselling scheme six weeks ago when they were contacted by the Arizona-based cemetery owners, Perpetua Inc., who told police they were concerned about possible financial wrongdoing, Dart said. The scheme came to light after another cemetery employee told the owners of the re-sold deeds and the owners contacted the sheriff's police department, Blair said.
Perpetua Holdings of Illinois, Inc. has owned the cemetery since 2001. Trudi McCollum Foushee, a Missouri-based attorney for company president Melvin Bryant of Richardson, Texas, would only confirm the company went to police, triggering the investigation.
Authorities alleged that Towns and the other suspects targeted graves they knew had not been visited in a long time and then Towns fraudulently altered the deeds to the plots, sheriff's spokeswoman Blair said. The plots were then resold to unsuspecting families seeking a grave site for a loved one.
All targeted grave sites were very old, though some still had headstones, Blair said. The caskets, vaults and bodies were dumped in a large back portion of the cemetery, where investigators found human remains lying in plain sight amid piles of dirt, she said.
Once a plot was resold, Blair said, "They would dig up the body, toss it and by the time the (newly) deceased person got there, they were put in the grave and their family was none the wiser."
When investigators went out to the cemetery, Dart said, "We originally thought it was just a pure financial crime that we were walking into and then ... within minutes of being out here, we had a pretty good handle on what we were dealing with, and it went well beyond anyone's idea of a financial crime"
Blair said that financial crimes charges could be added later, but it was unclear how much money was netted from the scam. Authorities are still trying to piece together the scheme with what few records exist.
"Unfortunately, they destroyed so much paperwork," Blair said. "I think that [the secretary] was tasked with destroying documents relating to the sale and resale of the deeds."
The Tribune is not naming the secretary because she has not been charged with a crime.
The sheriff's police asked anyone with loved ones buried at the cemetery to call (800) 942-1950.
--Matthew Walberg, Lolly L. Bowean, Steve Schmadeke, Alena Scarver and Joel Hood
July 9, 2009 12:15 PM | 110 Comments | UPDATED STORY
Cook County Sheriff's Police Chief DeWayne Holbrook greets a woman at the entrance of Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip. Relatives of those buried there came today looking for answers. (David Pierini/Chicago Tribune)
Four people have been charged after authorities discovered that dozens of bodies had been dug up at the historic Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip and the grave sites illegally resold.
Each was charged with one count of dismembering a human body, a Class X felony. They were identified as Carolyn Towns, 49, Keith Nicks, 45, and Terrence Nicks, 39, all of Chicago, and Maurice Dailey, 59, of Robbins. They will appear in Central Bond Court at 11:45 a.m.
An arrest warrant was also issued Tuesday for a fifth person, a 45-year-old woman who was a secretary at the cemetery, according to Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Brittney Blair. But the woman was not charged after investigators became convinced that she did not profit from the scheme and was only carrying out orders from Towns, who was the office manager.
"Carolyn Towns was the brains behind the operation, the one calling the shots," Blair said.
Detectives discovered a pile of bones -- from more than 100 bodies -- decomposed, above ground and uncovered in an overgrown, fenced-off portion of the cemetery, according to Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart.
In addition, bodies apparently were double-buried in already existing plots, Dart told WGN-AM 720 this morning. Dozens of FBI agents are expected in Chicago early next week to help sift through the evidence at the cemetery, Dart said.
The charges against Towns allege that "numerous graves were excavated and the human remains were then buried in a rear vacant lot in Burr Oak cemetery, Alsip ... She then sold the vacant gravesites for her own personal financial gain."
One of the first predominantly African-American cemeteries in the area, Burr Oak is the resting place of many historic figures, including civil rights symbol Emmett Till, blues legend Dinah Washington and heavyweight boxing champion Ezzard Charles.
Dart said he was certain Till's remains were not disturbed, but he could not be sure about the others.
This morning, a large crowd converged on the cemetery, most of them African-American, saying they wanted to find out if their loved ones' remains had been moved. The families expressed outrage, disgust and discouragement.
Dart said this morning that none of the cemetery's workers came to work today, so the sheriff's office was aiding residents walk through the plots.
"This is just heartbreaking. The people I have talked to have made me want to cry," Dart said. "The sense of violation is horrible."
"Some people come back from the grave site and it's not what it's supposed to be and I don't know what to tell them," he said.
Sheriff's employees are having concerned families first take a number. When their number comes up, they are taken to the site. But the wait is long so Dart's office has brought out chairs for the elderly as well as water, drinks and chips for relatives.
Some people who know where the location of their loved ones' graves are just heading to them on their own.
Dart said he believes the alleged scheme has been going on for about four years.
"We have evidence...There were also people being double-buried, that they would just sort of pound down the one casket or remains and put another set of remains on top," he told WGN-AM.
The disinterred graves appeared to be older, neglected ones, Dart said. "They specifically looked to older graves, where there might not be someone coming out there every week," he said.
He believes the alleged scheme has been going on for about four years.
"We have evidence...There were also people being double-buried, that they would just sort of pound down the one casket or remains and put another set of remains on top," he told WGN-AM Radio.
Dart said it would take weeks, if not months, before it will be known who the bodies are. Between 30 and 40 FBI agents "from all over the world" who specialize in identifying remains will arrive on Monday to work on the case, he told WGN-AM. It will take four or five weeks to sift through the area in the cemetery in which the bodies were dumped and which has been fenced off as the main crime scene, Dart said.
No remains have been removed yet, Dart said. The bones were scattered above ground, along with casket and other related debris, over an area of about four blocks in a hilly portion of the cemetery. There's a lot of overgrown vegetation there, he said, and the area stretches from Kostner to Cicero Avenues.
The FBI is conducting tests to determine the identities, but Dart said he was not familiar with their methods. He said it was possible not all bodies would be identified. Compounding the problem, many cemetery records appear to have been destroyed.
Dart said people have complained about the cemetery for months and have not received any answers. The families have complained specifically of flooding and even markers being moved. The Tribune in May wrote about the cemetery and residents' complaints.
Simeon Wright of the La Grange area, a cousin of Till, said: "This is reprehensible if it's true. I've got several generations of my family buried there, and I've never had any problems. ... But this is a pretty ghoulish story."
On Wednesday night, as news of the grim discovery spread, devastated families started trickling onto the cemetery grounds to check on their loved ones' graves.
Donetta Newman, 35, whose father and both of her grandparents are buried at Burr Oak, stood in the rain trying to get inside to see if their grave sites had been disturbed. "You always think this is the final resting place," she said. "This is just shocking. I'm very distraught."
None of the remains had been removed from the site, said Steve Patterson, a sheriff's spokesman. The state's attorney's office and FBI are also investigating, Dart said.
In recent years the cemetery at 4400 W. 127th St. has drawn complaints for overgrown grass, sunken grave sites and flooding.
Police told industry experts, consulted as they investigated the case, that the conspirators probably took in around $300,000.
Sheriff's police learned of the grave-reselling scheme six weeks ago when they were contacted by the Arizona-based cemetery owners, Perpetua Inc., who told police they were concerned about possible financial wrongdoing, Dart said. The scheme came to light after another cemetery employee told the owners of the re-sold deeds and the owners contacted the sheriff's police department, Blair said.
Perpetua Holdings of Illinois, Inc. has owned the cemetery since 2001. Trudi McCollum Foushee, a Missouri-based attorney for company president Melvin Bryant of Richardson, Texas, would only confirm the company went to police, triggering the investigation.
Authorities alleged that Towns and the other suspects targeted graves they knew had not been visited in a long time and then Towns fraudulently altered the deeds to the plots, sheriff's spokeswoman Blair said. The plots were then resold to unsuspecting families seeking a grave site for a loved one.
All targeted grave sites were very old, though some still had headstones, Blair said. The caskets, vaults and bodies were dumped in a large back portion of the cemetery, where investigators found human remains lying in plain sight amid piles of dirt, she said.
Once a plot was resold, Blair said, "They would dig up the body, toss it and by the time the (newly) deceased person got there, they were put in the grave and their family was none the wiser."
When investigators went out to the cemetery, Dart said, "We originally thought it was just a pure financial crime that we were walking into and then ... within minutes of being out here, we had a pretty good handle on what we were dealing with, and it went well beyond anyone's idea of a financial crime"
Blair said that financial crimes charges could be added later, but it was unclear how much money was netted from the scam. Authorities are still trying to piece together the scheme with what few records exist.
"Unfortunately, they destroyed so much paperwork," Blair said. "I think that [the secretary] was tasked with destroying documents relating to the sale and resale of the deeds."
The Tribune is not naming the secretary because she has not been charged with a crime.
The sheriff's police asked anyone with loved ones buried at the cemetery to call (800) 942-1950.
--Matthew Walberg, Lolly L. Bowean, Steve Schmadeke, Alena Scarver and Joel Hood
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