Cook County Sheriff Charges Four With Digging Up Graves & Reselling Plots, Allegedly Netting Scammers $300K

In Aslip, Illinois, The Associated Press reports:

• Prosecutors on Thursday charged three gravediggers and a manager in an elaborate scheme in which hundreds of corpses were dug up at a historic black cemetery near Chicago and strewn in a weeded area or reburied with other bodies so that plots could be resold, authorities said.(1) As frantic relatives of the deceased descended on the Burr Oak Cemetery -- the final resting place of lynching victim Emmett Till, blues singers Willie Dixon and Dinah Washington -- investigators said it could be months before they fully understand what took place.

Reportedly, more than 300 bodies are suspected to be disturbed and dumped into at least one mass grave as part of a scam that netted the workers about $300,000, authorities said.

For more, see 4 Charged In Grave Robbing Plot.

See also Chicago Sun Times: Infant headstones among the missing at Burr Oak.

(1) Reportedly, 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 have each been charged with one count of dismembering a human body, a felony. DeedContraTheft