CHICAGO (AP) — Stillborn babies are buried by the dozens in the same wooden box and the bodies of indigent adults are stacked in mass graves at a Chicago-area cemetery that inters the county's poor and unknown dead, authorities said Thursday.
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart called for a review of
the cemetery's contract at a news conference in which he criticized the
operation for haphazard practices and restated his belief that the state needs
legislation requiring DNA collection on all unidentified bodies.
Homewood Memorial Gardens President Tom Flynn told
The Associated Press that the cemetery follows protocol and does the best it
can for the $239 it receives per body. He said the cemetery was being made a
scapegoat and suggested Dart was trying to drum up attention for the
legislation.
Sheriff's department video of a Feb. 1 burial of
indigents at the cemetery shows workers unloading a rental truck packed to the
ceiling with more than a dozen wood coffins. In the video, workers use a
backhoe to stack the boxes into a single open hole in the ground.
One box is labeled with 10 names, which Dart said
were the names of infants.
"From a law enforcement standpoint, we were
disturbed," Dart said. "From a human standpoint, we were absolutely
appalled."
Dart said babies whose parents can't afford a
decent burial sometimes are put in a box with assorted bones and limbs,
sometimes including animal remains, identified as "mixed tissues."
Bodies layered eight high over two decades have created an elevated hill in a
section of the private cemetery.
Flynn said the cemetery is inspected yearly by the
county medical examiner's office. He said it has an adequate system for
tracking where specific bodies are buried and has no control over what's in the
wooden coffins it receives from the medical examiner.
"We don't control the number of babies that go
in a box or what they put in a box," Flynn said.
Cook County Medical Examiner Dr. Nancy L. Jones
said in a statement that remains of fetuses or stillborn babies transferred
from hospitals "are handled respectfully and placed in an adult-sized
burial shell ... There are no other types of remains present in the burial
shell."
Jones said remains are interred in individual
burial shells "in every other situation."
"I fully agree with Sheriff Dart that Homewood
is in violation of their contract with Cook County," she said.
Dart called for Cook County commissioners to hold a
hearing before signing a new contract for indigent burials. He said he supports
a bill introduced in the Legislature last week that would require DNA samples
and metal ID tags on unidentified bodies, limit how many bodies can be stacked
in a grave and prohibit burying multiple people in one casket.
"The process is chaos at best," Dart
said. "If you are attempting to try to bring closure of a case of a
missing person right now in this county, good luck. Good luck finding that
person. There is no DNA taken in many of the cases . and there's absolutely no
rhyme or reason to how people are buried."
Dart estimated the Homewood cemetery, which has had
the contract for 26 of the past 30 years, may have 8,000 bodies buried in its
paupers section.
The sheriff witnessed the mass burial Feb. 1 when
he visited the cemetery with Jason Moran, a sheriff's department detective
who's been investigating the practices since the department uncovered a scandal
involving the desecration of bodies at the area's Burr Oak Cemetery in 2009.
Moran said he uttered a prayer as he stood near the
lip of the open mass grave watching the burial of the wooden coffins.
"When I got there, I was thinking about work
and looking at it from a law enforcement standpoint. But then I realized I was
at a graveside funeral, really, and because I'm Catholic, I did the sign of the
cross and a silent prayer," Moran said. "I mean, these were real
people."
Associated Press writer Don Babwin contributed to
this report.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.
Photo
Caption: This image from video taken Feb. 1, 2011 and released Feb. 17 by the
Cook County Sheriff's Department, shows a worker at Homewood Memorial Gardens
cemetery in Homewood, Ill., stacking wooden coffins in a mass grave. At a news
conference Thursday, Feb. 17, 2011, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart says he was "absolutely
appalled" by the chaotic burial practices for indigents and unidentified
bodies by the suburban Chicago cemetery that has the county contract. (AP
Photo/Cook County Sheriff's Department)
