The Cook County Sheriff's Office and FBI are conducting a methodical survey of Burr Oak Cemetery, which is being treated as an enormous crime scene since allegations of illegal body dumping and burials surfaced.
The Cook County Sheriff's Department and the FBI will continue working side by side Tuesday to try to identify every single body at Burr Oak Cemetery, one grave at a time. CBS 2's Susan Carlson reports that work at one of the largest crime scenes in the history of the county will begin at 8 a.m. this morning when investigators will be sweeping over 100,000 grave sites.
The cemetery has been closed to the public while investigators sort out the massive crime scene.
Sheriff's employees have already begun brushing off and photographing headstones in preparation for today's shoulder-to-shoulder search.
They're looking for every headstone and every grave to find any more that may have been disturbed.
Meanwhile, investigators in the cemetery office and FBI agents will begin the daunting task of trying to identify the bones of well over 300 bodies that were dumped in an overgrown area full of garbage and weeds.
Agents say they'll try to use DNA testing, but they have their work cut out for them.
"There might not be any DNA to recover. If we are able to recover DNA, now we have the problem of matching it to a person," said FBI spokesman Ross Rice. "Some of these graves, as I understand it, are 50 years old. There may not be any DNA to go back and compare it with, so I'm not sure at this point what we're going to be able to do."
The search alone could take a month and a half at the very least. Burr Oak will remain closed until further notice.
But agents say the record-keeping at the cemetery was so bad, trying to identify every bone will be nearly impossible.
"If it looks like they may not be able to handle it with their own resources here from Chicago, we do have the option of calling in teams from other parts of the country," Rice said. "We haven't done that yet. We don't know if we're going to. We just have to wait and see."
Families looking for answers about their loved ones are encouraged to submit their information by e-mail or over the phone. No one is being allowed inside the cemetery anymore since it has been declared a crime scene.
The investigation is expected to cost Cook County more than $200,000 in overtime alone. At this time they've already received over 50,000 requests for information about buried family members, and that number continues to climb.
The county has set up three support centers to try to counsel families with relatives buried at Burr Oak Cemetery.
So far, seven lawsuits have now been filed against Burr Oak by families with loved ones buried there.
Three people charged with dumping the bodies for cash are all being held on $200,000 bond. And the alleged mastermind of the scheme: office manager Carolyn Towns is being held on $250,000 bond.
If you have loved ones buried at Burr Oak Cemetery and want to check on their well-being, call (800) 942-1950, or locally, (708) 865-6070, or send an inquiry to BurrOakCemeteryInvestigation@gmail.com.
thatvoodoochick
