Aug 11
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Our company has surveyed many cemeteries to map grave sites. Usually this was to construct an accurate site plan of marked and unmarked grave sites and available plots. However, last year we were contracted to conduct a ground penetrating radar survey at a cemetery near Chicago to assist in pending legal proceedings. We waited to publish this post till the case in the courts was concluded.
This started as a result of a raid on the Burr Oak Cemetery. Investigators found chunks of burial vaults, pieces of pine boxes that had been used as caskets decades ago, and even a skeleton wearing a suit and tie inside an empty burial vault, with no casket in sight. The remains included two pieces of skull fragments and part of a femur bone, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office said.
In July 2009, authorities charged 4 Burr Oak Cemetery employees with digging up human remains from graves for resale, and dumping the remains elsewhere in the cemetery. All remain free on bond while awaiting trial on charges of dismembering a human body, a Class X felony, the sheriff’s office said.
“There are more people listed as being buried in the cemetery than can physically be buried based on space,” Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart told NBC Chicago March 21. Dart figures there might be the remains of 300 to 600 people – taken from graves, allegedly so they could be re-sold, and scattered in an area where new owners want to create new plots.
The arrests made international headlines and prompted thousands of people to visit the historic black cemetery to try to determine if their loved ones were among those graves that were disturbed.
An archaeological research firm was appointed last year by a bankruptcy court judge who is overseeing the possible sale of the Alsip cemetery. They were tasked with determining whether it would be feasible for the 5.9 acres known as “Crime Scene A” to ever be used by new owners to conduct burials or even build a mausoleum there.
“Crime Scene A” had been targeted as a site for new burials, because it was thought to be the only part of the cemetery where bodies had not been buried.
Global GPR Services was contracted to scan this area using ground penetrating radar to locate any potential subsurface anomalies. After analyzing the data collected from this survey we identified the location of numerous potential target locations.
According to a released statement from Sheriff Dart’s office, radar work done by Global GPR Services found additional locations with deeply buried objects, some of which were substantial in size. That led to digging as far as eight feet deep and more remains being found at every level.
Finally on July 8, 2011, two years to the day after the grave reselling scandal blew open, Carolyn Towns, the ex-Burr Oak Cemetery director pleaded guilty. She blamed a gambling addiction and accepted a 12-year prison sentence.