Emmett Till Memorial Fund Scam Part Of Burr Oak Cemetery Scheme

The woman behind a long-running scheme to dig up bodies and resell the grave sites in a historic African American cemetery also embezzled funds from an Emmett Till memorial foundation, authorities said.

Carolyn Towns, 49, the former manager of Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, was charged along with three others Tuesday with dismembering a human body, a Class X felony. At an afternoon news conference at the cemetery, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said that Towns, of the 7500 block of S. Yates in Chicago, also pocketed money from a private foundation ostensibly set up to build a memorial to the lynched civil rights icon.

Till was a 14-year-old Chicagoan whose 1955 lynching in Mississippi helped propel the civil rights movement. He was buried in Burr Oak. His body was exhumed in 2005, as part of the investigation into his murder, before being re-buried in the same location.

Dart said that Till's remains were not disturbed in the scheme, which disinterred at least 300 bodies.

Authorities urged anyone who donated money to the Till fund or has family members at Burr Oak to contact the Sheriff's office by phone: [phone], option #4; or email: [e-mail].

Read complete coverage of the Burr Oak Cemetery case here.

Mugshots of the accused:

Comments

[levibatgirl]

The Emmet Till mu rd er is one of my earliest memories from childhood.

I vividly remember looking at photos in Look Magazine and being appalled that grownups could mu r der a child. I had just turned the tender age of 6 but I knew it had to do with the color of his skin although not yet aware that r@cism existed.

I never lost the sense of outrage or ever questioned the civil rights movement that followed. It really opened my eyes to some of the scary and ug ly realities in America.

[AlligatorShuz]

These are some very sad and mentally disturbed peole to do something like this. And for Carolyn Towns to scam money from the Emmitt Till memorial foundation she is just disguesting leech... And the other clowns there are no words in the English language to describe them..

[gah50]

The Till case was not unsolved. At trial Emmett Till's heroic grandfather identified the men who abducted Till. The white jury found the men, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam, not guilty. Shortly after the trial the men were interviewed and admitted to murdering Emmett Till.

[kk78]

thats awful

[KoiPondering]

Unfortunatly its considered unsolved as no one has been brought to justice for it, as long as there is no conviction in the murder it is officially considered an open/unsolved case most of the time.

[Cunningham]

I hope they're charged and prosecuted on EACH case. Those people deserve to go to prison for as long as they can possibly be held.

[folktraveler]

greed at the graveyard. stranger than fiction

[Logic325]

I highly suggest the PBS MURDER OF EMMETT TILL documentary. It is informative, moving, and terribly sad. I think you can google for the LOOK magazine article. It is heartbreaking that the murderers got away with it, even when they admitted it later on.