Over 16,529,671 people are on fubar.
What are you waiting for?
As the chilling grave-reselling scandal at Burr Oak Cemetery unfolded over the last 1½ weeks, the company that owns the historic site in Alsip has been virtually silent -- even as authorities repeatedly blasted the company.
But Saturday, 10 days after the scandal broke, officials with the owner, Perpetua Holdings of Illinois, gave the first extensive public defense of their actions. They denied claims they had stopped running the cemetery and did little to help the thousands of families who have loved ones buried at Burr Oak and are now looking for answers.
Trudi McCollum Foushee, a management consultant for Perpetua who was in charge of day-to-day operations at Burr Oak, pointed out it was a company groundskeeper who discovered the first piece of evidence in the case -- a partial skull -- in an unused section of the cemetery in late May. Foushee said she immediately notified police.
Four employees were arrested July 8 and accused of pocketing $300,000 in the scheme, in which bodies allegedly were dug up and dumped in mass graves.
"We share in the pain, we share in the disgust that humans could to this to other humans," said Foushee, who was brought in to run the cemetery in April after Carolyn Towns, 49, was fired for allegedly stealing from Burr Oak. Towns was one of the workers arrested and is accused of being the ringleader.
Still, Foushee said a routine inspection of the cemetery did not turn up evidence of the larger problem that has led Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart to declare the entire 150-acre cemetery a crime site.
"What has occurred was in no way obvious to the naked eye," she said. (So the bones that the ComEd folks saw 4 years ago wasn't obvious to the naked lie?! Lyin' sack o crap!)
Foushee's comments came after company CEO Melvin Bryant issued a statement Tuesday calling the four arrested employees' actions "absolutely despicable'' but providing little additional detail.
The company didn't even show for two Circuit Court hearings last week at which a judge turned over management of Burr Oak to Catholic Cemeteries. Foushee, said she was unaware of the hearings.
Also last week, Dart complained "there is nobody running the cemetery right now, other than me.".
But Foushee said she helped try to determine which graves were disturbed. She said she has been overseeing her staff and claimed to have a good working relationship with investigators.
But later Saturday, Dart spokesman Steve Patterson said Foushee has been at the cemetery for only "a few hours'' a day. He said she told authorities she was "just a legal adviser'' and "has nothing to do with the day-to-day operations and told us she was not there to take on that responsibility."
