Chicago Area Local News

TUCSON, Ariz. (CBS) ― The former chief executive officer of the firm that owns Burr Oak cemetery told CBS 2 Friday that she hired the woman allegedly responsible for a body dumping and grave reselling scheme, but never suspected that her employee was involved in such activity.

Slivy Edmonds Cotton has been identified in recent news reports as chief executive officer of Perpetua Inc. But she said she has not held the position since 2004, and Perpetua has since closed its headquarters in Tucson, Ariz., where reports have quoted the firm as being based.

She said she was horrified by the allegations that bodies were unearthed and cast in a dumpsite behind the cemetery in order to resell plots.

"This is beyond my comprehension," Edmonds Cotton said. "I can't imagine this having happened on my watch."

Burr Oak office manager Carolyn Towns, 49; and three of her gravediggers, Keith Nicks, 45; Terrence Nicks, 39, all of Chicago; and Maurice Dailey, 59, of Robbins, were been charged with dismembering a human body, a Class X felony.

Edmonds Cotton told CBS 2 that she hired Towns, and could not imagine her capable of such activity. She said she had heard rumors about mishandling of the cemetery but enforced her own policy.

"What we were about was honoring dead bodies," Edmonds Cotton said. "At no time would a desecration of a human body ever be permitted."

She said when she was in charge she did business out of Tucson but visited once a month or more. When asked if she had ever heard about staffers digging up graves there, Edmonds Cotton replied, "There's always been rumors."

Edmonds Cotton also said she knew there was limited space left, but said that problem could have been solved by constructing mausoleums or other above-ground facilities, rather than digging up graves and reusing them.

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said it was profits, not space, that motivated the scheme.

Edmonds Cotton said she was fired by investors at Perpetua in 2004, on allegations that she was costing the company too much money, and that she was spending too much time on Burr Oak.  She said somebody from the company should be on-site to deal with the fallout at the cemetery.

State documents name the owner as Melvin Z. Bryant, who has Texas ties. He's the president of Perpetua, according to the Illinois Secretary of State's Business Services Office.

Edmonds Cotton says he called her when he eventually took over. She also says Perpetua falls under a bigger umbrella, Pacesetter Capital Group.

Reporter Jay Gormley of CBS 2's sister station in Dallas tried to find him.
He went to what is believed to be Bryant's home but was told Bryant was out of town on business.

Edmonds Cotton said she had a strong interest in the Emmett Till Historical Museum that was planned for the cemetery and was very eager to see the museum open.

Burr Oak Cemetery is the final resting place for Till, the teenager from Chicago who was brutally murdered in Money, Miss., in 1955, in a racially-motivated attack by two men who accused him of whistling at a white woman. His death helped spark the Civil Rights Movement.

Towns was the administrator for a fund to construct the Till Historical Museum on cemetery grounds. But no such museum exists or was ever built, and Dart said Towns was pocketing money from the fund for it.

Since her departure, Perpetua had another chief executive officer who worked for $500,000 a year. That executive also left, and now another CEO, Melvin Bryant, is at the helm in Richardson, Texas. Attempts by a Texas CBS 2 sister station to contact Bryant were not successful.

(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

Editor's Picks

• Gay Celebrities
• Did You Know? Stars From Chicago!
• Celebs Who Lean To The Right
• Real Or Fake?