July 8: Authorities at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Ill., where dozens of graves were dug up and bodies dumped in a massive pile. (AP)
ALSIP, Ill. – Authorities say about 30 more cases of disturbed graves have turned up at a historic black cemetery in Illinois where four people are accused of unearthing hundreds of corpses in a scheme to resell burial plots.
The four made about $300,000 in a scheme believed to have stretched back at least four years.
Authorities say some of the corpses were dumped in a weeded area, while others were double-stacked in existing graves.
The Burr Oak Cemetery is the final resting place of lynching victim Emmett Till, as well as blues singers Willie Dixon and Dinah Washington.
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Investigators found Till's original glass-topped casket rusting in a shack at the cemetery. The 14-year-old was killed in 1955 and his battered body helped spark the civil rights movement.
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart on Friday said about 2,000 families have come to the cemetery trying to determine the status of loved ones buried there.
Three gravediggers and a manager at Burr Oak have been charged in the case.
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