Burr Oak Cemetery is the Site of Black on Black Crime

Chicago is my home town and it is also the place where my parents are buried.   Today one of my friends called me to make sure I had heard the Burr Oaks cemetery story. Fortunately my parents were not buried there, but the story is still heartbreaking. It is estimated that 200-300 bodies have been dumped so that the graves could be re-sold, and some of the bodies were packed down so that new bodies could be buried on top of them. Four people have been arrested and all of them are black. This is black on black crime at its worst. Many prominent blacks are buried there including Emmitt Till.  ”Carolyn Towns was the brains behind the operation, the one calling the shots,” a spokesman said. The charges against Towns allege that “numerous graves were excavated and the human remains were then buried in a rear vacant lot in Burr Oak cemetery, Alsip … She then sold the vacant grave sites for her own personal financial gain.” The scheme was successful because bereaved relatives often came into the cemetery office to buy grave sites with cash. Towns would take the cash and destroy the deeds and other paperwork for the existing graves. Towns would keep the cash and pay off the other defendants by increasing their overtime pay, which she controlled as cemetery general manager. Mahoney described the defendants’ actions as “cold, calculating and showed a total disregard for human souls.” There is a special place in hell for Towns and her cohorts, but before they get there they will have to make a stop at their final resting place and hopefully they will not encounter the same kind of cruelty that they freely dealt out.