Police saw bones at cemetery but dropped case in 2005

Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO — Police in Alsip, Ill., found human bones and shattered vaults dumped in plain view at Burr Oak Cemetery four years ago, but detectives dropped the case within a week, telling the woman now accused of masterminding a massive grave desecration they had no interest in investigating further, according to a police report obtained by the Chicago Tribune.

During that meeting in 2005, cemetery manager Carolyn Towns gave several excuses for the exposed bones, suggesting “animals may have brought the remains to the site after coming upon them elsewhere in the cemetery,” the report says.

Though a sergeant had witnessed “nearly 100 piles of dirt” containing “concrete pieces of previous vaults, some marble pieces and a number of bones,” police accepted Towns’ explanations and left her in charge of cleaning it up, the report reveals.

Detectives were “satisfied that the remains that were discovered were of some antiquity and had no interest as a recent crime,” according to the report, which the Tribune obtained Thursday through a Freedom of Information request.

Towns, 49, is one of four Burr Oak workers charged with felony dismemberment of a human body. She purportedly plotted a scheme in which up to 300 bodies were illegally dug up so their grave plots could be resold.

In 2005, Alsip police had been following up on reports from subcontractors working for Commonwealth Edison Co., who said they were installing power lines March 17 of that year when they found human skulls along the cemetery’s northwest edge.

One of the workers took a skull to his motel room before turning it over to police, the report says. It’s unclear where the skull or other remains were before that, or where they eventually ended up.

Police met with Towns, ComEd managers and the Cook County Highway Department four days later at the cemetery, according to the report.

Towns said it was “possible that the remains were unearthed during grading operations,” or that workers “inadvertently disinterred an earlier, unrecorded burial,” as well as suggesting that animals dug up the bones, the report states.

Police allowed the ComEd workers to return to work the next day, telling them to report any further human remains to Towns, not to them. They told Towns “to contact the Illinois comptroller’s office to determine what steps are required to address [the] bones/remains” — a request Towns never followed through on, according to Comptroller Dan Hynes’ spokeswoman Carol Knowles.

A suggestion that a state archeologist be called in was ultimately rejected, the report shows.

When the Tribune asked Alsip police about the incident two weeks ago, Police Chief Christopher Radz initially dismissed the subcontractors’ story, saying detectives had completed a “thorough investigation” and found nothing wrong.

Radz, who was not the police chief in 2005, said the report would show “these ComEd guys aren’t telling the truth” but refused to release it. Later that day, he announced police were reopening the investigation.

This week, he released the police reports on the investigation but declined to respond to questions, citing the reopened investigation.