Free Republic

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...

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...