Jul 12, 2009 11:13 am US/Central
Alleged Graveyard Mastermind Shocks Friends
Alleged Graveyard Mastermind Shocks Friends, Family of Carolyn Towns
ALSIP, Ill. (Sun-Times Media Wire) ―
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Carolyn Towns, 49, is office manager of the cemetery. She allegedly sent her gravediggers out to unearth and dump bodies as she resold burial plots and pocketed the money. She also allegedly collected money for an Emmett Till Historical Museum, but pockete
Cook County Sheriff's Department
Since she was a young girl, Carolyn Towns was a devoted member of the First Mount Calvary Missionary Baptist Church in Woodlawn.
In recent years, she sang in the church choir.
For Memorial Day, she invited the church's pastor to Burr Oak Cemetery for a prayer-filled service. "She is a very good person," her husband, Steven Towns, said Friday.
Reports of Towns' piety stand in stark contrast to the cold picture authorities paint.
Prosecutors say Towns masterminded the Burr Oak Cemetery scheme, allegedly directing three gravediggers to dump body parts, stack bodies and destroy headstones and vaults to maximize cemetery space for off-the-books profit.
Working with the 49-year-old Towns, authorities said, were Maurice Dailey, 59, a backhoe operator; Keith Nicks, 45, the gravediggers' foreman, and his brother Terrence Nicks, 39, a dump truck driver.
All four are in Cook County Jail, charged with one count each of felony dismembering a human body.
The Rev. Robert Cain, pastor of First Mount Calvary, said Towns' family is distraught over the allegations. Cain also finds them hard to believe.
"From what I know of her, I could never imagine that," Cain said. "She's a kind and helpful person in our church. Who knows what people are going through or what they are capable of doing?"
Towns frequently spoke of her faith and her involvement in the church, said Lester Stanton, a former neighbor.
"She's someone respected in the church," he said.
He has trouble imagining her as the ringleader in corrupting a cemetery for profit.
"I think she's the fall guy," Stanton said.
The Townses had financial problems. Public records show the couple filed for bankruptcy twice since 2001. Records also showed several tax liens against the pair.
The financial trouble wasn't a secret to their friends.
"Prior to this thing happening, I knew that they had financial problems," Stanton said.
He said Steven Towns worked in the automotive industry and had bounced through several jobs in recent years.
Cain said he feels torn because many of his congregants have family members buried at Burr Oak, and he deeply sympathizes with them.
"In either case, I just want justice to be done whatever way," he said. "I'll stay support to the Towns family and the other parishioners of my church."
Like Cain, Mary Wilson, 66, of Blue Island, has been trying to reconcile the horror of not knowing the fate of family grave sites in Burr Oak with her longtime acquaintance with Dailey, a 25-year cemetery employee who prosecutors said ran the backhoe while digging up graves.
Wilson said Dailey and his wife always paid their respects at her family's funerals. He was friendly and upbeat when she saw him three weeks ago at a south suburban gas station.
"When I go to visit my mother's grave, sometimes I see him out there," she said. "I was totally shocked. I was knocked out of my socks."
While authorities said the four looted the cemetery of $300,000, Wilson said Dailey wasn't ever flashy with money. She doubted he was the one driving the scheme.
"Somebody had to mastermind that," she said. "I don't think they have the brains."
Keith Nicks' mother-in-law, who asked that her name not be used, said she wasn't aware of any financial problems for him and his wife. She said he was "hardworking" and that she was surprised by his arrest.
"He is a good guy as far as I know," she said.
Nine months ago, Keith Nicks, his wife and two teenage sons moved into a single-family home in the 900 block of West 129th Place, said Robert L. Baughn, who lives across the street.
Baughn said Nicks traveled back and forth to the cemetery and his home during a typical day in a cemetery pickup truck, which he also used to plow the alley and area in front of his home in the winter.
His brother and fellow Burr Oak employee Terrence Nicks frequently hung out in Keith Nicks' front yard on weekends, Baughn said.
Keith Nicks and his wife introduced themselves to Baughn after they moved in, but they didn't spend a lot of time chatting after that, he said.
"When I first met them, they appeared to be two hardworking people," he said. "This is a sad situation, and the body count's just going higher and higher."
(Source: Sun-Times Media Wire © Chicago Sun-Times 2009. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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