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Gail Cooper thought she had made peace with her daughter's death nearly 25 years ago.
On Saturday at the Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Cooper walked into a terror like she's never known.
"This is like an Alfred Hitchcock movie," said Cooper, gesturing toward the backed-up traffic, the line of family members and the dozens of investigators who have closed the entire cemetery and declared it a crime scene.
Cooper learned the section of Burr Oak called "Babyland" -- where her six-year-old girl was buried after she was killed in a car accident -- was a new focus of investigators who have already found a mass grave in another portion of the cemetery.
"That disturbs me a lot, you know?" Cooper said, breaking down into tears. "To think that maybe they took her and threw her over in the corner like she was a piece of trash. That was my baby."
Four Burr Oak cemetery workers were charged with digging up hundreds of graves and reselling the plots. More than 300 bodies are suspected to be disturbed, and that number is expected to climb. The bodies were dumped into at least one mass grave as part of a scam that netted the workers about $300,000, authorities said.
Since Friday, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said he's heard from 10 families who can no longer find headstones for their children in Babyland, an area where predominantly infants and children are buried.
But Dart cautioned parents not to panic because it's still unknown whether bodies were disturbed.
"It's not an area where bones have been found, (but) there's irregularities," Dart said. "People who have purchased headstones -- they aren't there anymore. I've personally found headstones dumped in inappropriate locations."
Worse, Dart said maps for Babyland were non-existent. Records, containing grave and burial information, are a mess.
"The record-keeping here is outrageous, absolutely outrageous," Dart said.
The Cook County Sheriff's Department is essentially running the cemetery, with armed investigators guarding its entrance, directing traffic and even passing out bottles of water to family members who waited in line in the heat Saturday to get some answers. One person was transported to the hospital after feeling faint from the heat.
Investigators have the daunting task of determining which bodies have been moved and which gravesites have multiple bodies stacked inside.
"We're trying to bring some sanity to a place that's had very little," Dart said.
One by one, family members dazedly walked into the cemetery Saturday wondering whether their loved ones were ever really laid to rest. They filled out cards noting the name of the deceased and the year they died and were told they may get information on their loved one's gravesite within five days.
Most had paid upwards of $2,500 to $3,000 for burials.
Jennifer Gyimah carried a framed family relic: a historic photo of eight family members, all of whom were buried at Burr Oak. She once felt proud to have more than 35 family members buried at Burr Oak. Now, she said: "It's almost akin to rape."
Colette Wilkerson discovered Friday that the headstones to both of her parents' graves were missing. Different ones were in their place.
"Oh My God. I can't even describe it," Wilkerson said, her voice cracking as she spoke. She called it "evil" and "heartless."
"They just did what they wanted to do for the love of a dollar," Wilkerson said.
Sections of the cemetery, which has more than 100,000 gravesites, may reopen next week. At least two main areas are expected to remain cordoned off.
The first abuts 123rd and Cicero Avenue, where a mass grave site is suspected. The second is the center of the cemetery, an area that curiously slopes up four feet higher than the rest of the grounds, where "double stacking" of bodies inside graves is suspected.
While bones were found in that area, maps of burial plots appear to be missing, sheriff's police spokesman Steve Patterson said.
A police helicopter Saturday photomapped the cemetery, and FBI agents were gridding off portions in preparation for an extensive search for human remains beginning Monday. FBI spokesman Ross Rice said with the prospect of comingled remains from hundreds of bodies, the use of DNA may be impossible.
"We don't know who we're looking for. We don't know who was disinterred. We don't know who was put in their place," Rice said. "We would like to identify every set of remains that we find. I just don't know if it's possible."
Dart said cemetery owners have "voluntarily" stopped offering burials at Burr Oak.
Because the entire cemetery was closed as a crime scene Saturday, Cooper will have to wait for answers. Even if her daughter's grave is intact, Cooper said she will push the cemetery to move it.
"It's not sacred anymore, it's not peaceful, it's not tranquil," Cooper said. "To me, it's mean and evil now."
Linda Reed, whose father, uncle and other family members are buried at the cemetery, said if she could talk to those responsible, she'd have just one question: "Have you sold your soul to the devil?"
