‘Plot Turnover’ in Famous Chicago Cemetery Leads to Felony Charges

Clayton Kent

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At the Burr Oak Cemetery in the southern suburbs of Chicago, lay the remains of a number of prominent figures from the African-American Community. It is also the site where four cemetery workers were accused of digging up hundreds of graves and dumping the remains in order to resell the burial plots. The Burr Oak Cemetery office manager and three gravediggers were changed with dismembering a human body, a felony.

Members of the community showed up at the cemetery to check grave sites, which includes the final resting place of historical figures like blues singers Dinah Washington and Willie Dixon, former world heavyweight champion Ezzard Charles, and Emmett Till, whose brutal murder in 1955 catalyzed the civil rights movement.

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said it was not immediately clear whose plots had been dug up; an estimated 200-300 graves were desecrated. The scheme was estimated to have netted about $300,000 over the course of four years. Piles of bones and smashed gravestones from the dug-up graves were dumped in overgrown sections of the cemetery, Dart said.

For a full account, see the AP story.