Looks like we'll do anything for a buck these days....
Not even the dead can rest in peace when there's money to be made, apparently. At least not at Burr Oak cemetery, located in the Chicago suburb of Alsip.
Burr Oak cemetery is a historic graveyard, the final resting place of Emmit Till, the young boy who was lynched in Mississippi a half century ago for grinning at a white girl.
It's also a cemetery with a gruesome secret...old, unmarked graves were being dug up, the bodies dumped elsewhere on the grounds of the graveyard, so the plots could be resold for cash.
Apparently, the four workers involved have pocketed more than $300,000 from the horrifying scam.
They're now in jail, awaiting trial.
You can read more on the methods used to make money off of the dead in the Sun-Times and in the Trib.
Just thinking about this scam leaves me feeling shrouded in a black and horrible gloom.
Burr Oak cemetery is a historic graveyard, the final resting place of Emmit Till, the young boy who was lynched in Mississippi a half century ago for grinning at a white girl.
It's also a cemetery with a gruesome secret...old, unmarked graves were being dug up, the bodies dumped elsewhere on the grounds of the graveyard, so the plots could be resold for cash.
Apparently, the four workers involved have pocketed more than $300,000 from the horrifying scam.
They're now in jail, awaiting trial.
You can read more on the methods used to make money off of the dead in the Sun-Times and in the Trib.
Just thinking about this scam leaves me feeling shrouded in a black and horrible gloom.
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