CHICAGO (AFP) — Grave robbers stripped at least 300 plots at a historic black cemetery outside Chicago, dumped many of the bodies and then resold the plots for a profit, officials said Thursday.
The years-long scheme was carried out by the cemetery's manager and three gravediggers who sold the "used" graves so they could pocket the fees rather than pass them along to the Arizona-based owners.
"This was not done in a very delicate way," Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart said at a press conference.
"They would excavate a grave, excavate the entire site and then they would proceed to dump the remains wherever they found a place to do it in the back of the cemetery."
They would also sometimes leave the remains in the grave and "pound them down and put someone else on top," Dart said.
It will likely take months before authorities can identify all of the bodies and restore the gravesites, Dart said, adding that efforts will be complicated by the fact that the cemetery's records were destroyed and altered.
"We don't know what else to tell the people, but we are horrifically sorry they have been subjected to this," Dart said.
"We are working on making this right."
The scheme came to light when Burr Oak Cemetery's Arizona-based owners contacted the sheriff's department after discovering a large discrepancy in the cemetery's finances.
Burr Oak is one of Chicago's oldest predominantly African-American cemeteries and is home to a number of historic figures, including Emmett Till, whose 1955 murder galvanized the civil rights movement.
Blues legend Dinah Washington and boxing champ Ezzard Charles are also buried at Burr Oak.
The gravesites that were stripped and then resold were very old and appeared not to have regular visitors, officials said.
Scores of distraught family members flooded the cemetery to check on the graves of their loved ones and try to find answers.
"There should be a special place in hell for these graveyard thieves who have done so much to hurt these families," civil rights leader Reverend Jesse Jackson said at the afternoon press conference.
The cemetery's manager, Caroyln Towns, is also accused of pocketing cash from a fund she set up to build a memorial museum for Till.
Towns and grave diggers Keith Nicks, Terrence Nicks and Maurice Daily were charged with dismembering a human body.
"This crime is a whole new dimension that shows us what lengths people would go through for financial gain," said Cook County prosecutor Anita Alvarez.
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