Eleven bodies were buried in a south suburban cemetery today after police learned they had been left unattended in a chapel on the site for up to a week.
Workers with a backhoe carried the bodies in
caskets one by one to a burial site on a hill at Homewood
Memorial Gardens Cemetery in Thornton
as detectives from the Cook County Sheriff's Department looked on.
Dwayne Cook discovered the bodies in the chapel Wednesday while trying to visit the gravesite of a friend, Hershal Jordan, who had an internment ceremony at the cemetery earlier this week. Cook said cemetery employees guided him to where they said Jordan, who was to be buried through a state aid program, was laid to rest in an unmarked grave.
"When I got there, I said 'Something's fishy here,' " Cook said. "I just had a feeling. It didn't seem like a fresh grave." He let himself into the back room of the nearby chapel and found Jordan's casket and those of 10 other people scheduled for the state aid burials still inside.
"He didn't deserve this," Cook said. "All God's children don't deserve to be treated like animals."
Cemetery owner Tom Flynn said the back-up occurred because the cemetery fired its regular backhoe operator on April 6 and subsequently received a large number of indigent burials from Cook County.
Cook County Sheriff's Det. Jason Moran said the department is investigating the situation, as is the state Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, which oversees cemeteries.
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