Hundreds of bodies disinterred, plots resold at historic Illinois graveyard
I just saw on CNN that perhaps as many as 300 graves were dug up. Jesse Jackson was on the scene, saying that this was a three to four year fiasco that went on right under the nose of the cemetery’s owners. Not just graves, but headstones and records were likewise tampered with or destroyed.
“Someone should have detected this before now,” Jackson said, in what is perhaps the understatement of the day. A class-action lawsuit, he assured CNN, would be forthcoming. This is pretty bad.
Four cemetery workers have been charged with dismembering bodies after police found what they called “startling and revolting” conditions at a historic cemetery 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.
via Cops: Bodies dug up, plots resold at Ill. cemetery | IndyStar.com | The Indianapolis Star.
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This graveyard is a few miles straight south of my house. You can see it when you drive on the Tri-State Tollway near the Cicero Avenue exit, just past the Swap-O-Rama and the Alsip water tower. I’m amazed at the number of promiment gravesites near my house. On the way to my daughter’s preschool, we pass Restvale, home of Muddy Waters.
Anyway, the Burr Oak Cemetery has been a financial wreck for eons. That and Restvale are from the days when the cemeteries were segregated in Chicago the same way the living were/are.
Where is Vincent Price when you need him!