ALSIP, Ill. (AP) — Three gravediggers and a cemetery manager unearthed hundreds of corpses from a historic black cemetery south of Chicago, dumping some in a weeded area and double-stacking others in existing graves, in an elaborate scheme to resell the plots, authorities said Thursday. All four were charged with felonies.
Frantic relatives of the deceased descended on Burr Oak Cemetery — the final resting place of lynching victim Emmett Till and blues singers Willie Dixon and Dinah Washington — in hopes someone could tell them their loved ones' remains were not among the pile of bones that littered a remote area of the property in Alsip, 12 miles south of Chicago.
Some found apparently undisturbed plots, but others wandered, unable to locate loved ones. "This is a mess. We can't find our people," said Ralph Gunn, 54, of Chicago, who filled out a report for authorities after a futile search for the headstones of his brother and nephew.
Others cried and clutched cemetery maps as they waited for a chance to look themselves. They listened as Sheriff Tom Dart said the displacement of bodies "was not done in a very delicate way," and that remains were dumped haphazardly, littered with shards of coffins. For graves stacked on top of each other, Dart said it appears they "pounded the other one down and put someone on top."
A visibly shaken Rev. Jesse Jackson voiced the mounting anger at those who would toss the bones of the dead like trash. "In my judgment, there should be no bail for them, there should be really a special place in hell for these graveyard thieves who have done so much, hurt these families," he said.
