CHICAGO (AP) — An area of a suburban Chicago cemetery is so saturated with human remains that bones have been rising to the ground's surface, and workers may have discarded the remains of some 200 more people than initially thought as part of an alleged scheme to resell burial plots, a sheriff said Monday.
Rain and erosion have been causing bones to surface
in a back section of Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart
said. Officials at the historic black cemetery had maintained that the 5.9-acre
area had only been used for the disposal of broken headstones, branches and
other debris.
Sheriff's investigators stopped searching for
scattered remains weeks after the alleged scheme was uncovered in 2009, but
archaeologists assigned to examine the area by a bankruptcy judge overseeing
the possible sale of Burr Oak have found evidence suggesting the remains of
more than 500 people were dumped as part of the alleged scheme, or more than
200 more than first estimated, he said.
"We found numerous bones laying on the surface
... and even as far as eight feet down we were coming across parts of caskets,
bones and the like," Dart said. "The remains, the caskets, the
(casket) liners, we just keep finding them."
Four cemetery employees were arrested in 2009 on
felony charges including desecrating human remains, conspiring to dismember
human bodies, and theft. They have all pleaded not guilty and are awaiting
trial.
Dart has fought efforts to open the area of the
cemetery for burials, saying many of the bones found scattered about the
cemetery were found there. He said he hoped the archaeologists' findings would
persuade the bankruptcy judge to forbid burials in the area.
"Treating the back of that cemetery as if it
was a normal cemetery where we can bury people is absurd," said Dart, who
has pushed for a memorial for the area.
It was unclear how the findings would affect a
possible sale.
"The six acres would have allowed thousands of
burials and that would give it (Burr Oak) a long term future," said Roman
Szabelski, the one-time court-appointed receiver at the cemetery who is now
overseeing burials there. "Without that, it becomes limited."
Szabelski said that there are about 300 burials at
the cemetery a year, but most of them are at family plots where there remains
some space.
Dart said that if there is not space to bury many
more people at Burr Oak, a government agency may need to take control of it to
maintain the grounds.
Thousands of distraught people descended on Burr
Oak in the days after the alleged scheme was uncovered, only to find no sign of
their loved ones' graves. Dart halted the investigation after several weeks,
during which more than 1,100 human bones were found. Months later, a study
showed that records indicated that as many as 147,568 people were buried at
Burr Oak — or about 10,000 more than an analysis indicated it was designed to
hold.
The cemetery 20 miles southwest of Chicago is the
final resting place of several notable black figures, including civil
rights-era lynching victim Emmett Till, blues singers Willie Dixon and Dinah
Washington, and boxer Ezzard Charles.
Copyright
2011 The Associated Press.
Photo
Caption: This image from video taken Dec. 3, 2010 and provided by the Cook
County Sheriff's Department Monday, March 21, 2011, shows long bone fragments,
right, along with casket hardware, casket lining and a lot marker No. 82 at
Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Ill., found after an examination by archaelologists.
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said Monday more examination of the grounds of the
suburban Chicago cemetery suggests that the remains of hundreds more people
than originally thought were dug up as part of an alleged scheme to resell
burial plots. Dart thinks the remains of at least 500 people were moved _ not
the 300 that detectives estimated in 2009 when his office arrested four
employees at the cemetery. (AP Photo/Cook County Sheriff's Department)
