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Babies' Graves Vanish From Ill. Cemetery

By Rob Quinn, Newser Staff

Posted Jul 11, 2009 5:50 AM CDT

(Newser) – Police declared the whole of Burr Oak cemetery in the Chicago suburbs to be a crime scene last night, after hundreds of families reported empty or missing graves, including an entire section of the cemetery called Babyland, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Relatives will be barred from the site for about the next week. The local sheriff believes well over 300 graves were excavated by four employees who dumped remains in a mass grave and resold their plots.

The part of the cemetery reserved for children could not be found. "A lot of women came up to me and asked for help with Babyland," the sheriff tells CNN. "To a person, every one I talked to could not find any of their children in Babyland." Many grave sites are completely missing, he added, and records of many burials have disappeared. Four workers face felony charges in the scheme said to have netted them hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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Grave markers are seen scattered on the floor of a shack at the Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Ill., yesterday. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)

Family members search for the graves of relatives at Burr Oak Cemetery after graves were discovered dug up Wednesday and bodies dumped into unmarked mass graves. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)

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It has become abundantly clear to us that this crime scene is going to continue to grow. We do not have an end in sight.
- Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart

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COMMENTS

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Showing 3 of 6 comments

oldgoat

Jul 13, 2009 6:19 AM CDT

It isn't a negative thought at all. I'd say that since the scam has been going on so long it is hard to believe that hardly any of them ever came to visit the graves. I still believe that most are looking at dollar signs more than actual grief.

Newser001

Jul 11, 2009 12:56 PM CDT

Oldgoat, It doesn't matter how many times they went, it's still their child, loved one - What a horrible negative thought you are projecting.

oldgoat

Jul 11, 2009 10:58 AM CDT

These people have been doing this for four years and they are just now being found out? For all the people I see on TV crying and carrying on you'd think that they were out there often and the graves just disappeared over night. What the people did was bottom of the barrel wrong, and that is for sure, but I also tend to believe that there are several that are all of a sudden going to be very passionate about their relatives that were buried there and are now missing.

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US • Crime & Courts

Chicago • grave robbing • Illinois • burial • cemetery • Emmett Till • Burr Oak Cemetery

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