www.ditl.org

The graves were old -- some unmarked, some forgotten.

And so four workers at historic Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip plundered them, smashing open the concrete liners and hauling away the human remains inside to a weedy dump site, Cook County investigators say.

If bones clattered off the dump truck along the way, they were left on the side of the cemetery roads, investigators say.

As many as 300 bodies were unearthed and dumped in a mass grave as part of a scam that netted the workers about $300,000, authorities said Thursday.

The empty graves were resold to unsuspecting families for cash -- off the books, authorities said.

"There should be ... a special place in hell for these graveyard thieves," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who appeared with authorities at a press conference at the cemetery Thursday.

Four current and former cemetery employees were charged Thursday with one count each of felony dismembering a human body: Carolyn Towns, 49, of the 7500 block of South Yates; Keith Nicks, 45, of the 900 block of West 129th Place; his brother Terrence Nicks, 39, of the 12800 block of South Morgan, and Maurice Dailey, 59, of Robbins.

Towns, the cemetery manager, allegedly masterminded the grisly scam. Keith Nicks, an employee since 1992, was the gravediggers' foreman, while his brother was a dump truck operator. Dailey, an employee for 25 years, ran a backhoe, Cook County Assistant State's Attorney John Mahoney said in court at 26th and California.

Cook County Judge Maria Kuriakos Ciesil set bail at $250,000 for Towns, while the three men were each held on $200,000. Towns was being held late Thursday in the psychiatric unit at the County Jail complex, officials said.

More people may yet be charged, the sheriff's office said. In addition, authorities said a fund set up in 2005 to build a memorial to 14-year-old murder victim Emmett Till -- who is buried at the cemetery -- was looted.

Sheriff Tom Dart said the scam took place over at least four years. The human remains in the mass grave -- in the northwest corner of the cemetery -- are so hard to identify that the sheriff's office has brought in 30 to 40 FBI experts -- some of whom have scoured mass graves in Serbia and other parts of the world.

Dart said the process of trying to identify the bodies will be similar to work done at Ground Zero following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Federal authorities have opened a fraud investigation, but it was too early to say whether a joint federal and state prosecution will be pursued, sources say.

In court, Mahoney said Towns took cash from families who came to the cemetery seeking to bury loved ones. She allegedly drew up paperwork on the new burials, and then destroyed it so there would be no record. Towns then pocketed the cash and paid off the other three defendants, Mahoney said.

Towns would then tell the three workers to exhume human remains from existing graves and put them in the mass grave, Mahoney said. Employees allegedly excavated entire burial sites -- including the concrete vault that surrounds the coffin. The caskets and headstones were often smashed, officials said.

The workers sought out older, unmarked graves that hadn't been visited in a while, Dart spokesman Steve Patterson said. One was that of a baby who died in 1946, Patterson said. The headstone was smashed to pieces.

New bodies were then buried in the old plots, Mahoney said. Authorities also said some old bodies were pounded into the ground, with new bodies "double-stacked'' atop them.

The sheriff's office discovered, in plain sight, a jawbone with teeth along with 29 other bones in the mass grave -- an unkempt grassy area, prosecutors said.

One employee told prosecutors he saw skulls and rib bones strewn around the area.

"There are a lot of remains scattered around," Dart said. "This was not a surgical effort. ... They were dug up with backhoes and discarded."

Police first learned of the allegations when an attorney for the cemetery, Trudi Foushee, alerted them in May about the skeletal remains and said the facility was unable to account for some funds. Foushee had been acting cemetery manager after Towns was removed from her post in late March on allegations she stole $8,400 from the cemetery, prosecutors said.

Foushee represents Perpetua Inc., the company that owns the 150-acre Burr Oak Cemetery. Company officials could not be reached Thursday.

Foushee was told about the bodies by a cemetery worker who noticed the skeletal remains when he was practicing his backhoe skills, prosecutors said.

Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes said today that he's instructed his staff to begin license revocation proceedings against Perpetua Holdings Inc., the owner of Burr Oak Cemetery.

"Even though it was rogue employees who were committing these atrocities, it is (Perpetua's) cemetery, and they are ultimately responsible, and they have abused the right to hold these licenses," Hynes told reporters at his downtown office.

Hynes said the process could take "some months." Hynes also said his office doesn't have the legal authority to police the nearly 2,000 funeral homes, cemeteries and crematories it overseas in a "very narrow, limited role." The comptroller said his office is only authorized to oversee trust funds for such things as pre-paid funeral and "perpetual care" plans.