(NNPA) - The original casket of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy whose 1955 murder helped put the civil rights movement on a national stage, was found discarded during an investigation into a scheme at an Illinois cemetery.

Emmett Till

Till remains buried at Oak Burr Cemetery in Chicago, a historically Black gravesite. But, the original casket in which he was buried was found rusting in a dilapidated shack at the cemetery by investigators looking into reports of missing headstones.

A manager of the cemetery and three others have been linked to a scheme that involved dismembering human bodies. Investigators said that the group may have pocketed as much as $300,000 from the scheme.

The four removed caskets from certain plots, and the empty graves were resold off the books to unsuspecting families for cash. As many as 300 graves may have been desecrated and the bodies dumped into a mass grave, police said, but Till's was not among them.

The cemetery is owned by Tucson, Arizona-based Perpetua Inc. The scheme unraveled after authorities received a tip from a cemetery worker who was not involved.

'Unbelievable' cemetery horror hits home

by Kathy Chaney
Real Times News Service

CHICAGO — From the moment the news broke that the unspeakable act of digging up and dumping bodies at the Burr Oak Cemetery had taken place over the course of the last four years, my heart dropped.

Then I started making phone calls. I needed to know who in my family was buried there since many had been laid to rest while I was a child. Then I remembered that within the last three years, my family made two trips there to bury loved ones.

I couldn't help but let the disbelief affect me as I watched news footage of the hundreds of families camped outside the graveyard, but when I realized that my family needed to be among them, my heart sank lower.

The horror of finding out that bodies were dug up and basically thrown overboard as if they were hurling garbage into the bin in the alley or a carton of eggs was opened and turned upside down.

Unbelievable! Out of the 74 people who voted on ChicagoDefender.com's weekly survey question — "Do you have a relative or friend buried in Burr Oak Cemetery?" — 64 said "yes."

We still haven't confirmed whether or not our loved ones have been disturbed, but the likelihood is there.

As the Revs. James Meeks and Jesse Jackson said, their souls are with the Lord, and we find some comfort knowing that.

(Kathy Chaney reports for the Chicago Defender. She wrote this commentary as a blogpost for Kat's Corner, which is featured at ChicagoDefender.com.)