Former Burr Oak Cemetery Manager Sentenced For Grave Reselling Scheme

By Samantha Abernethy in News on Jul 9, 2011 8:00PM

Exactly two years ago, radar showed that the folks running the historic Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip were reusing graves by digging up more than 100 bodies and dumping them elsewhere. Now the ringleader Carolyn Towns has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for her involvement in the scandal.

Two years to the day after the scandal blew open, Towns, 51, blamed a gambling addiction, told a judge how sorry she was for the families pained by the scheme she oversaw, and accepted a 12-year prison sentence.

Emmett Till's was among the bodies desecrated. Fourteen-year-old Till was beaten to death and drowned in 1955 in rural Mississippi because he whistled at a white woman. Thousands of Chicagoans viewed his casket after his body was returned -- that casket was found tucked away in a shed.