Ex-Burr Oak Cemetery director Carolyn Towns pleads guilty, gets 12 years

Chicago Sun-Times ^ | July 9, 2011 | LAUREN FITZPATRICK

[La Enchiladita]

Carolyn Towns, who for years consoled grieving families as manager of the Burr Oak cemetery, herself wept Friday as she admitted her role in a grave reselling scandal at the historic black burial grounds.

Two years to the day after the scandal blew open, Towns, 51, blamed a gambling addiction, told a judge how sorry she was for the families pained by the scheme she oversaw, and accepted a 12-year prison sentence.

...On July 8, 2009, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart announced that Towns and three other cemetery workers had been digging up graves at the iconic cemetery, dumping the bodies and reselling the plots for cash since at least 2003. Thousands of relatives clamored to the gates, looking for their loved ones’ plots, until Dart declared the 150-acre campus a crime scene.

[La Enchiladita]

Towns pleaded guilty to six of the seven original felony counts against her, including dismembering a human body and theft from a place of worship. Investigators said she took some $300,000 over several years.

...Towns’ former crew and codefendants, foreman Keith Nicks, 47, of Chicago; backhoe operator Maurice “Bear” Dailey, 61, of Robbins; and grave digger Terrence Nicks, 41, of Chicago, still await trial on the same charges.

...The crew would crush the vaults and caskets in the graves, dump the human remains in the part of the cemetery where they threw garbage and dirt, they said. And they would “double stack” graves to create “bogus graves,” they said.

...The scandal prompted a law, passed last year by the Illinois Legislature, requiring cemeteries to provide information to a central database on graves, and establishing a “Consumer Bill of Rights” telling families their options, costs and exactly where their loved one will be buried.

But the the Senate has voted 54-2 to eliminate the gravesite database, as well as background checks for cemetery employees, which the law also requires.

[Don Corleone]

Its just “The Chicago Way”.

[Mouton]

I bet she has an Obama support sticker somewhere on her car and or home.

[Graybeard58]

Cook County democrats are appalled. They had only been counting one vote per grave.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

She'll be out in six months.

She's one of Eric Holder's people. Laws don't apply to them.

[blam]

[PzLdr]

Had to get those dead voters out early, so they could cast their ballots for the Dims.

[La Enchiladita]

How can people like this live with themselves??

There is a lack of conscience on the part of these people that I just cannot fathom.

One could theorize their evil deeds are an extension of the entitlement mentality, which gets more out of hand every day, especially for blacks who see one of “their own” as president.

[usconservative]

Cook County democrats are appalled. They had only been counting one vote per grave.

***SNORT!*** Now THAT's funny!!! You must live in C(r)ook county to have come up with that so fast.

(I moved out, across the border to Will 20 years ago..)

[dennisw]

Can’t blame slavery for this one. Can’t blame whitey either

[1010RD]

Gambling saved our schools and will make Illinois rich again!

[bigbob]

She got off easy. Not Casey-easy, but still...

One only hopes there is some factual basis for Dante’s version of Hell.

[Graybeard58]

I live in central Illinois.

[Ken H]

Looks like they couldn't keep this story buried.

[mcshot]

Just gettin out the vote.

[af_vet_rr]

One could theorize their evil deeds are an extension of the entitlement mentality, which gets more out of hand every day, especially for blacks who see one of “their own” as president.

This has been happening since 2003. It has nothing to do with race or politics and everything to do with people whose moral compasses are off. If she can rationalize the lawbreaking and the kind of harm she was doing year after year, even after seeing the faces of the surviving family members, she can do much worse. I hope that she serves out her full sentence. It's the same with the crematorium in Georgia that dumped hundreds of bodies rather than cremate them for the families. Some people are just evil and find their way into jobs they should never be near.

[Artcore]

Yo, it don’t be her fault...she be oppressed.

[TXnMA]

"It has nothing to do with race or politics and everything to do with people whose moral compasses are off."

CORRECTION: ...everything to do with people whose moral compass pointers were never magnetized...

[af_vet_rr]

..everything to do with people whose moral compass pointers were never magnetized...

That is the best answer. This reminds me of when I was a kid, there was a funeral home where the employees would steal jewelry after people were buried as well as the coffins. They would dig up the bodies soon after burial, take the jewelry, throw them in a cheap box, and rebury them without anybody knowing. They might not have been found out if a body hadn't needed to be exhumed a few months after burial. They were apparently hocking the jewelry in another state. You have to be pretty messed up in the head to rip off people and their families like that.