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| Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart shows a portion of the 55,000 requests that have been sent by families for information about burial plots at Burr Oak Cemetery. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green) |
Posted: Wednesday, 15 July 2009 9:33AM
Sheriff calls for new management at Burr Oak
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CHICAGO (STNG) - The seven employees still left at Burr Oak Cemetery are asking the Cook County Sheriff's department when it's OK for them to take a lunch break.
The few gravediggers and clerks check in with sheriff's officials about coming in to work, clocking out at the end of the day and what to do while they're at work.
And that's got to stop, Sheriff Tom Dart said.
On Tuesday, Dart asked Cook County Circuit Court Judge Stuart Palmer for an emergency order to appoint a receiver to take over the scandal-plagued cemetery.
"There is nobody running the cemetery other than me," Dart said at a news conference Tuesday.
A court-appointed receiver would handle the day-to-day operations and Dart asked the court for an entity with "experience in cemetery management and cemetery record keeping," according to Dart's affidavit.
The sheriff's request comes nearly a week after his department has received more than 55,000 written and verbal requests from families searching for loved ones buried at the historic Alsip cemetery where four employees are accused of running a grisly grave-recycling scheme for at least four years.
The sheriff's department has been sorting through the cemetery's records trying to get a handle on the more than 100,000 known graves at Burr Oak but shoddy record-keeping and tampered records are making the task increasingly difficult.
"Most of the file cards are covered in mold and have rotted together," Dart said. "Books that we use are missing pages. Different documents we know they altered as well."
With Dart, at the conference, was a crumbling, rusting Burr Oak file cabinet filled with dank funeral cards that have "congealed" together.
Investigators can't pull the documents apart and don't even know what year they're from.
"We have an inability to give people answers then," Dart said. "For that very reason it's all the more important to get a receiver in here to get somebody to get control of the operations of the cemetery to start giving people explanations as to where their loved one is," Dart said.
Meanwhile, Melvin Bryant, president of Tucson, Ariz.-based Perpetua Inc., hasn't shown up at Burr Oak, Dart said.
Dart said authorities have told Perpetua, Burr Oak's owner, it needs to be running the cemetery but company officials have been unresponsive.
"They know the address. We haven't seen them," Dart said.
Bryant released a statement Tuesday expressing "outrage" at his former employees' actions, which he called "despicable."
"I extend my heart-filled sympathies to all of those who have loved ones buried at Burr Oak Cemetery. I also have family members buried in the cemetery and share the same outrage toward the conduct of the individuals," he said in a statement.
"Neither I nor Perpetua, or its investors have benefited from the criminal conduct. We understand the historical importance and legacy of Burr Oak Cemetery and want to build upon it -- not see it destroyed by criminal wrongdoing," Bryant said in a statement.
In the statement, Bryant cited pending lawsuits and the ongoing investigation for his limited comments.
Last week, Dart said Perpetua should foot the bill for the sheriff's efforts to run the cemetery in Perpetua's absence.
He said Tuesday there's no estimate as to how much the Burr Oak investigation is costing the county. But now some sheriff employees are volunteering their time to the investigation.
Also, Cook County Clerk David Orr is providing the sheriff seven of his staff members for data entry, clerk spokeswoman Courtney Greve said.
Meanwhile, the cemetery's employees are still working.
Asked if the employees are being paid Dart said, "I don't think pay day's come yet. That probably would be a very relevant question that will come in a week or so."
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Copyright 2009 STNG Wire, The Chicago Sun-Times. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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