Cook County to sue owners of desecrated cemetery
The Cook County Board of Commissioners voted Tuesday to sue the owners of a historic black cemetery in suburban Chicago to recover the cost of an investigation of an alleged scheme to dig up graves and resell the plots.
The county board acted after Sheriff Tom Dart said the cost of overtime, materials and equipment poured into the investigation at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip was mounting quickly.
"About $350,000 has been expended on the investigation," Dart said at a news conference. "I can't turn over county assets without receiving compensation."
Dart and Robert D. Grant, special agent in charge of the FBI's Chicago office, said 200 human bones have been found scattered in the cemetery. Those bones may never be identified, they said.
The sheriff described a chaotic situation in which headstones had been removed, some bodies may have been buried on top of each other and pieces of wood that might have been part of coffins were found scattered around the cemetery.
Although families are eager to get into Burr Oak to check on relatives' graves, the cemetery remains closed while FBI agents and sheriff's workers attempt to bring order to the situation.
"It makes no sense to further torture people by having them come out to the cemetery and wander around aimlessly," Dart said.
Four former cemetery workers -- Carolyn Towns, Keith Nicks, Terrence Nicks and Maurice Dailey -- have been charged with dismembering a body and are being held the Cook County jail.
The cemetery is the final resting place of perhaps 100,000 people, including blues singers Dinah Washington and Willie Dixon, boxer Ezzard Charles, several Negro League baseball players, and Emmett Till, the Chicago teenager whose 1955 lynching in Mississippi helped spark the civil rights movement.
Officials said none of those graves have been disturbed.
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