Jul 10, 2009 12:09 pm US/Central
Class Action Lawsuit Planned For Burr Oak Families
One Woman Found Different Headstone On Her Mother's Grave
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
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A pile of stone, which police believe is made up of smashed burial vaults and headstones, at the Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip.
CBS
Attorneys plan to file a class action lawsuit Friday on behalf of several families that have loved ones buried at the Burr Oak cemetery whose bodies were dug up and dumped.
Attorney Louis C. Cairo of Goldberg, Weisman & Cairo Ltd. plans to file the suit on behalf of anyone who knows that a relative or loved one at the Alsip cemetery has been affected the recent scandal.
Four people are charged in a scheme in which they allegedly resold burial plots and pocketed the money, then exhumed the bodies in the resold plots and pitched them in a dumping ground outside the cemetery, and destroyed old records.
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said Thursday that as many as 300 bodies were affected, and
on Friday he said the number was likely even greater than that.
One victim of the alleged scheme was a client of Cairo's law firm, whose mother, Alma Stewart, was buried at Burr Oak in February 1980. The woman couldn't find her mother's burial plot or headstone, and was told by cemetery staff that they had no record her mother was buried there. Her mother's gravesite had fresh dirt and mulch, and a gravestone for someone else, a law firm release said.
"The shock and despair that the 49-year-old daughter experienced cannot even be imagined," the release said.
The law firm plans to hold a news conference on the lawsuit at their law firm, 1 E. Wacker Dr. on Saturday at 11 a.m.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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