Posted on 07/08/2009 10:48:55 PM PDT by Lorianne
At one time, Burr Oak Cemetery was the only place black Chicagoans were sure they could bury their dead.
But on Wednesday, the historic African-American cemetery became the site of a horror story.
As many as 100 human bodies — someone’s grandfather, grandmother, father, son, daughter, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew cousin or friend — were removed from their graves and the plots resold.
“All of us who were working on this for the last week were pretty distraught,” Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart told me.
“You start with the premise of your own loved ones and how they are cared for after they are buried, but there is also a true significance to this particular cemetery,” he said.
“I’ve been by Emmett Till’s grave several times. This is where his mother, Mamie Till Mobley, is also buried, and there is a long list of notable people buried here. This isn’t an ordinary cemetery,” he said.
Other well-known people buried in Burr Oak include jazz legend Dinah Washington; bluesmen Willie Dixon and Otis Spann; Harlem Globetrotter Inman Jackson; and several Negro League baseball players.
Officers raided the cemetery, at 4400 W. 127th St, in Alsip, Wednesday morning. Five people were taken into custody.
Dart’s office was notified by the cemetery’s owners of “impropriety” about three weeks ago.
“We thought it would be straightforward financial theft. We found out that graves were being opened and remains were disinterred and removed,” he said.
Dart believes the scheme has been going on for about four years.
Earlier Wednesday Dart met with several South Side funeral directors and ministers to advise them of the scandal.
“It really makes me feel bad, especially because we deal with Burr Oaks all the time,” said Spencer Leak Sr., the long-time president of Leak and Sons Funeral Home on the South Side, which had a representative at the meeting.
The cemetery’s downfall has a special significance to Leak.
In 1964, Leak joined 10,000 people led by his father, A.R. Leak, and the Rev. Clay Evans to protest the racially segregated Oak Woods Cemetery.
It is appalling that 45 years later, employees at the city’s first African-American cemetery are being accused of stripping graves for profit.
“For many years, this was the only cemetery where African Americans could be buried,” Leak said.
“This cemetery was owned by John Johnson and Ebony Magazine when Johnson owned Unity Insurance Company,” Leak said.
“There are a lot of prominent African Americans buried there. Because our funeral home has serviced so many families throughout the years, we know we have to be responsive to families,” he said.
“I want to hear specifics so we can know how to deal with our families. Do we have to take them out to the cemetery and take them to the grave where they thought they buried their loved one,” Leak said.
“Then, for the families who have buried people in the last four years, we need to know if they were put in one of the resold plots.”
So far details of the extent of the desecration are sketchy.
But Dart believes the employees who conspired to pull off the scheme targeted older graves and unmarked graves that had not been visited for a long period of time.
The thieves dumped the bodies in a mass site in the rear of the cemetery — caskets and all.
Dart said he’s seen evidence that the desecration of graves may be widespread.
“There were plenty of concrete vaults that were shattered,” he said. “More than we could count.”
Because I have several close relatives buried at Burr Oak, I will be among those demanding answers.
Frankly, I am outraged.
How could cemetery owners not have a clue until now that this shameful crime against the dead was being committed?
The fact that a group of employees was able to get away with such a diabolical scheme for so long points to gross neglect of this historical cemetery.
“It was well thought out,” Dart said.
The employees apparently freelanced selling grave plots and dealt with cash.
“One person had an inordinate control of records, and a lot of those records have since been destroyed.
“We don’t know the full extent of this yet,” he said.
But he is confident that Emmett Till’s grave is intact.
“I’ve talked to employees who were not involved in this and they assured us that the grave looks the same way it has always looked,” Dart said.
This is every family’s nightmare.
Bet those stolen corpses are still voting Democrat though.
As opposed to being stripped for fun?
Hmm, the race of the criminals is not mentioned, is it?
Were the plots vandalized by unknown people or were they simply dug up by the cemetery owners and the bodies and such thrown in a pile? If they were vandalized, why would the cemetery decide to resell the plots? If the cemetery owners dug up the bodies, why would they have further vandalized and desecrated them?
Cheap shot on a real tragedy for all those families.
Ha! Now that would be the real story!
Cemetery employees dug up the bodies, dumped them and resold the plots.
That’s horrible! Peoples loved ones dug up and cast aside by these criminals so they could re-sale the lots!
I wonder if they opened the coffins and took the gold out of their teeth too? Sick creeps.
>>That’s horrible! Peoples loved ones dug up and cast aside by these criminals so they could re-sale the lots!
I wonder if they opened the coffins and took the gold out of their teeth too? Sick creeps.<<
These folks are pikers.
Look at Joe Jackson backing up the tractor trailers to the places where stuff MJ had.
I am sure you are right that the family finally got to feast on MJ’s (financial) remains. All those years of sucking up may pay off.
Whew! I thought I was the only one confused by it. I can't quite understand how this plan was supposed to work. Wouldn't the families have noticed a different name on the tombstone when they went to visit their loved ones? If the cemetery was reselling the plots without changing the names, wouldn't the new family notice the wrong name was on the stone? It doesn't make sense, or maybe it's too late at night for me.
I did see that line in the article. But, the plan still seems so incredibly bold. I wonder how often other cemeteries pull this same stunt.
It was a cash flow problem. 100K a month and it was the end of the month.
This is really sick. Chicago has gone to far this time.
“Whew! I thought I was the only one confused by it.”
In any cemetery, go to a long since established section (which can be up to 150 yrs old) and notice the absence of tombstones in the rows (any where between 0% and 90%). THOSE are the plots sold in this scheme. Calvary cemetery in NYC is “full” and was in the ‘80’s, but back then an offical commented to Newsday that the cemetery none the less had room for every person in NYC in the present day.
Just getting their reparations
If they buried people “standing up”, they could get three times as many bodies into a given area.
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