Bond set for four alleged grave robbers

PHOTO GALLERY

ALSIP, Ill. (AP/WBBM) - Four former employees accused of digging up bodies and reselling plots at a historic black cemetery near Chicago made about $300,000 in a scheme believed to have stretched back at least four years, authorities said Friday.

Three gravediggers and a manager at the Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip are accused of unearthing hundreds of corpses and either dumping some in a weeded, desolate area near the cemetery or double-stacking others in graves. The cemetery is the burial place of civil rights-era lynching victim Emmett Till and blues singers Willie Dixon and Dinah Washington.

While Till's grave site was not disturbed, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said investigators found his original iconic glass-topped casket rusting in a shack at the cemetery.

The 14-year-old Chicagoan was killed in 1955 after reportedly whistling at a white woman during a visit to his uncle's house in Mississippi. Nearly 100,000 people visited the casket during a four-day public viewing in Chicago, and images of his battered body helped spark the civil rights movement.

When Till was exhumed in 2005 during an investigation of his death, he was reburied in a new casket. The original casket was supposed to be kept for a planned memorial to Till.

Thousands of families have come to the cemetery since Thursday looking for answers about their loved ones, authorities said. Hundreds of relatives, some clutching maps of the 150-acre site, were seen at the cemetery Friday.

Dart said officials have assisted the families in locating relatives' plots, and family members have reported at least 30 cases of disturbed graves and missing headstones.

The sheriff said two burials planned for Thursday also have gone wrong - with one person initially buried in the wrong plot and another whose plot was already occupied by someone else's body.

"This is a heartless act, these graveyard robbers," the Rev. Jesse Jackson said Friday. Jackson called on the cemetery's Arizona-based owner, Perpetua Inc., to answer for the conditions.

The Illinois official who regulates cemeteries said Friday that the process of revoking the cemetery's license has been started. Comptroller Daniel Hynes also said Friday his office is investigating whether the money that families paid for future cemetery needs is still safely held in a trust.

The cemetery is owned by Perpetua Holdings of Illinois. Hynes said the company is cooperating with authorities, but the horrible problems at Burr Oak justify revoking the license.

Perpetua started the investigation by calling Cook County authorities to report alleged financial wrongdoing and issued a statement Thursday that the company is cooperating with investigators.

The suspects, all of whom are black, were identified as Carolyn Towns, 49, Keith Nicks, 45, and Terrence Nicks, 39 - all of Chicago - and Maurice Dailey, 61, of Robbins. They each have been charged with one count of dismembering a human body, a felony.

Bond was set at $250,000 for Towns, the cemetery's manager, and at $200,000 for the other three.

Authorities said Towns also pocketed donations she elicited for a Till memorial museum. She has not been charged in connection with those allegations. Court documents show she was fired from the cemetery in late May amid allegations of financial wrongdoing.

A spokeswoman for the Cook County state's attorney's office said Towns is being represented by a private attorney, but she did not know the attorney's name. The Cook County public defender's office said it had not yet assigned attorneys to the other three cases.

The Sheriff's office will try to help families determine if their loved ones' remains have been moved and discarded.

Hundreds of people turned out in the heat Thursday to check the grave sites of their loved ones.

Ericka Tolbert's daughter died when she was only 10 days old. That was 21 years ago.

And Ericka Tolbert was feeling a mother's grief for a second time.

"I couldn't find her. It was like her headstone had been removed. And I pray to God that they have not messed with my child.

"Jail time is not large enough for this type of punishment. What needs to happen is, they need to dig some holes and bury them alive. And then when they turn to bones, throw them away."

Investigators are beginning the job of mapping and surveying the crime scene where bodies were discarded.

WBBM's Steve Miller spoke with Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart.

Sheriff Dart stood on the western edge of the cemetery.

"The smaller mounds that you can sort of see peeking up there are the ones that we have found holding bones in them. They sort of fit the M.O., which is the grave was dug up in whole and deposited in one large group.

"So most of those mounds are potential crime scenes. Many of them have parts of the burial vault in them as well. A lot of them have burial vaults and rebar sticking out.

"You'll see that they run all throughout here in the higher weeds, going down. And then there's many more down that way, too."

Sheriff Dart says hundreds of bodies are there. Dumped. And he says it will take months to find answers.

At the bond hearing, it was learned the operation allegedly run by Towns involved her re-selling the graves and taking the money, and compensating the three men with overtime pay.

Keith Nicks was the foreman. His brother Terrence Nicks ran the dump truck. And Dailey ran the back hoe.

Towns allegedly would tell the men to go dig up a body, put them in a shallow grave and then put a new body in the original disturbed grave.

Keith Nicks has a lengthy criminal record, although he was only ever found guilty of disorderly conduct. He was charged at various points with assault, domestic battery and violating an order of protection, but the charges were dropped.

Towns has no prior criminal charges. Criminal background information for Dailey and for Terrence Nicks was not immediately learned.

A Class X felony is punishable by 6 to 30 years in prison.

The cemetery owners went to authorities with the allegations in this case about six weeks ago. An employee not involved in the scheme told them colleagues were doing burials on the side and using occupied grave sites, and discarding the bodies already in the graves.

At a news conference at the cemetery Thursday afternoon, Sheriff Dart explained how the scheme worked. An unsuspecting person would buy a burial plot for a cash payment, and afterward, one of the gravediggers disinterred an existing grave and dumped the body somewhere in the back of the cemetery. The burial plot buyer never found out.

Towns was at the center of the operation, both pocketing the payments and directing the gravediggers, Dart said.

"The records are in shambles here. The actual sites are not well marked. It's very difficult to ascertain what is where," Dart said. "So this is going to take some time, so we've been trying to plead with the public as much as we ask for patience, because it's going to be needed now."

It is believed the operation had been going on for four to five years. The owners have been in charge of the cemetery for the past six years.

The forensic investigation is going to take months to perform.

Five cemetery employees are assisting the sheriff's office in the investigation, on which almost 100 sheriff's employees are working, Cook County Sheriff's spokesman Steve Patterson said.

The FBI is also assisting in the investigation, looking for possible federal violations, FBI Chicago Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge Tom Troutman said.

Burr Oak Cemetery is the final resting place for many prominent African-Americans, including Emmett Till. His plot was not disturbed. Till is the teenager from Chicago who was brutally murdered in 1955. His death in Mississippi helped spark the Civil Rights Movement.

CBS 2 has learned that Carolyn Towns is the administrator for the Emmett Till fund. Dart alleged at a Thursday news conference that Towns was pocketing money from that fund, which she set up independently. She is listed as the contact person for the Till Historical Museum at the Burr Oaks Cemetery.

But no such museum exists or was ever built, Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez said.

Blues legends Willie Dixon and Dinah Washington are also buried in the cemetery.

The cemetery is now owned by Tucson, Ariz.-based Perpetua Inc.

If you have loved ones buried at Burr Oak Cemetery and want to check on their well-being, call (800) 942-1950.

Anyone who donated money to the Emmett Till Historical Museum fund is also asked to call the number above.