This breaking story abour reselling graves and digging up bodies to do so ......

[Stinky The Clown]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ic8JGTGKmRsXEeg1vw4kR9hCrcugD99ANFRO0

What does this say about us? About these people? About greed? About callousness? About crime and punishment? About the need for regulation?

I hope this thread discusses the actual questions above, or similar questions ..... and maybe not the specific case breaking now on teevee. The case today is but a single example.

[Stinky The Clown]

1. BTW, the presence of Jesse Jackson at the news presser (WTF??) is legitimate fodder for discussion.

[hlthe2b]

5. Is this suspected to reflect a racial issue? beyond the fact

so many prominent A. Americans from previous decades were buried there...

[Stinky The Clown]

6. I didn't know that

What I know is Jackson and Sharpton, along with people like Gloria Allred never seem to find a camera that doesn't entice them to be there.

It seemed to me that others had the situation under control.

[hlthe2b]

18. that is true....

Mixed blessing I suppose...

[Stinky The Clown]

22. Did I just hear that both Emmit Till and Dinah Washington are buried there?

That said, all of this is an aside. My original issue was the kind of people who would do this sort of thing. I find it chilling and disgusting.

[hlthe2b]

24. Yup... a very important and historic cemetary which does not

make it any less acceptable than if it had occurred in a more tiny and perhaps less noteworthy rural setting.

[mimitabby]

26. in other countries

Now, I want to say first off that in the USA you are buried supposedly forever, and people whose loved ones are getting dug up have every right to be outraged and litigious; but
when I went to the small Italian town's cemetery where my ancestors were supposed to be laying, I couldn't find anyone who didn't die in the last 25 years. To my shock and horror, my relatives smilingly explained; you only get your spot for a certain amount of time. When your time is up, they throw your bones in a mass grave in the back!! YOu get what you pay for. If you pay for 20 years, you get 20 years. I guess my relatives didn't pay that much because none of the ancestors was still in a named box.....

And about Jesse Jackson, who would YOU call? Jessie Jackson would do his best to get press down there pronto to splash it onto the screen.

[roguevalley]

31. my parents and I made a pact. We will be cremated and when I

die, my parents, myself and our dogs will go into the river together. My parents are on the shelf in my living room with mementos around them and beside them our two of our six dogs. This is the way to go, cremation.

[proud patriot]

2. Horrible

:wow: x(

[Joanne98]

3. Wasn't there a Bush family company in Texas that got caught doing this?

It was years ago.

[Mist]

10. Yes, close political ally and contributer Robert Waldrip, of a Houston funeral business. nt

[Joanne98]

29. Thanks Mist.

[Taverner]

4. To play devils advocate: we are going to have to do this some day anyway

That is, if we keep breeding at the rate we are now...

[Stinky The Clown]

7. The cemetary where most of my family is buried has already started doing this.

But is is fully above board and respectful. There are no bodies dumped in the back 40.

[Turbineguy]

8. They do this in the Netherlands

You get to use the grave for 20 years. They aren't too hard nosed about it though. My Father's been in a 20 year grave since 1952.

[MADem]

20. Germany, too, I think. nt

[hlthe2b]

9. In Denver, the history of Cheeseman Park with Congress' blessing

is reminiscent of this horror story. Turn your sound down if you go to this interesting link-- whatever is embedded is too loud.

http://www.rockymountainparanormal.com/Cheese.htm

Everyone has heard stories about homes being built on old cemeteries. How greedy developers neglected to relocate the bodies. That the end result was unhappy spirits haunting these new Denver homes. Here is a story about the old city cemetery that became a city park in the heart of Denver.


In 1859 the area now known as Cheesman Park was given to the people of Denver for use as a cemetery by an act of Congress (this location was located on an old Arapaho Indian burial ground) Will Larimer, who founded and laid out the first streets in Denver, named the place Mt. Prospect.

---snip--By another Act of Congress dated January 25th, 1890 the city was authorized to vacate this parcel of property known as Mt. Prospect Cemetery from a place of burial to a public park. In recognition of Congress doing this for the city, Senator Teller changed the parks name to Congress park. It was the responsibility of the living relatives to relocate the bodies of these dearly departed. However those interned at Potters field generally had no family or during the course of their lives participated in activities that guaranteed that none of the living would claim them as relatives. The city contracted undertaker E. P. McGovern to remove these bodies at a cost of $1.90 each and for them to be transported to Riverside Cemetery. This gruesome work began on March 14, 1893.

--snip--
On March 19, 1893 the Denver Republican headline proclaimed "The Work of Ghouls". The article revealed that workman in charge of removing the bodies were breaking them into fragments and distributing the remains into "two and sometimes three of the boxes in which they are conveyed to the new burial site." The boxes provided by the undertaker were three feet six inches long. Due to the dry soil many of the bodies exhumed were rather well preserved. It must have been a gruesome site to witness intact remains being shattered and stuffed into these undersized boxes. The newsman described the scene; "The line of desecrated graves at the southern boundary of the cemetery sickened and horrified everybody by the appearance they presented. Around their edges were piled broken coffins, rent and tattered shrouds and fragments of clothing that had been torn from the dead bodies...All were trampled into the ground by the footsteps of the gravediggers like rejected junk."

more at the site--fascinating history for Denverites, as this is a popular central Denver landmark.

[Mrs. Overall]

11. Why would DUers be unrecommending this thread?

Not sure about this whole unrecommend thing.

[Stinky The Clown]

13. Stupid people do stupid things

It is even easier to be stupid when one be anonymously stupid.

[hlthe2b]

21. Me either.... To unrecommend this thread simply underscores

how readily the system can be abused.

[Dora]

12. I think we need to stop burying our dead. nt

[undeterred]

14. You know the economy is bad when people think up

shit like this.

[sandnsea]

15. A Bush buddy did this a while back

In Florida. There was another scandal in Texas. It was also the company hired to manage burials after Katrina. Who is this today? I've got grandkids and cartoons.

[imdjh]

16. Most major highways on the east coast are built on old roads/trails and farms.

Many a family cemetery and Indian burial ground was displaced with the expansions and bypasses of the 1950's and 1960's. Some of the graves were moved, some of the gravestones were moved, so of the Indian cemeteries were moved, some of the battlefield graves were moved. Some weren't.

But this case, a perpetual care cemetery doing this is quite different from all that. These graves aren't being disturbed for the common good. The problem is if these were truly unmarked graves, then who has standing to pursue this?

[DainBramaged]

17. It is true, ran into it when we buried my Mom

Our family has owned the plot (7 GRAVES) in the graveyard since the early 1900's, my great grandparents, grandparents, and now my parents are buried there. The people who own the graveyard tried EVERYTHING they could to get the plot away from us and put my family in the new mausoleum they built. Why you ask, because they can resell the plot for THOUSANDS while by law only have to pay us ONE dollar.

We had to get our lawyer to send them a cease and desist order to get them to leave us alone. One plot left for either my sister or myself, who ever goes first.

[dixiegrrrrl]

19. Colma cemeteries just outside city limits of SF, case in point.

Actually couple of cases in point.

At the turn of the century, the City of San Francisco ran out of room to bury people, and in fact, with very few exceptions, it is now illegal to bury people in SF.
so the "countryside" of what is now Colma, 9 square miles, became a cemetery, the remains in SF were transported to Colma, all burials there after were in Colma. The cemeteries are divided, there is a Japanese one, a Jewish one, a Catholic one, and a famous Pet's Rest, where animals are buried, some of them of once owned by movie stars, other famous people.
Except, couple years ago now, the 20 year lease on Pet's Rest was up, but the folks that paid for burial of their pets were never told it was a lease. Suddenly the people got letters giving them
notice to remove their long deceased animals.
Huge furor.
Pet's Rest is now part of the expanded golf course.
Said expanded golf course was at one time part of the cemetery.
Next to the expanding landfill, which at one time was part of the cemetery.
I was told that on 20 year cycles, cemetery=landfill=golf course.
Land is never sold, it is leased for 20 years.
There is a large Chinese owned casino across the street from the Colma cemetery.
Other than that, it is a very quite neighborhood, ( except for the constant roar of jets flying over.)
I lived there for a few years, on the side of San Bruno Mountain which overlooks Colma and Daly
City.

[nadinbrzezinski]

23. This is common practice around the world,

just that they are open about this.

As to what it says about US society... well you tell me

[Stinky The Clown]

25. Many have rightly noted that. There's a huge difference, however.

It is a known practice, carried out respectfully.

This story is about greedy opportinists who have evn been so callous as to dump bodies in the back 40 (as it were).

[nadinbrzezinski]

27. Well the respectful I am not so sure

It is done in a less than respectful way as well, In public cemeteries south of the border if you do not pay every so often, body is taken out, cremated, or thrown into mass grave. Private cemeteries are less shall we say hard about it. I know that this i

In reality that will have to happen here, but they will have to be open about it.

Then again it involves the great taboo in US culture, DEATH.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

28. This is indeed very disturbing

I visit cemeteries for genealogical purposes. There's nothing as heartbreaking as seeing a heap of broken tombstones piled together in the corner, I thought. But this unearthing corpses to sell the plots to someone else is even worse! IF there were a shortage of space, then I could see interring more than one body in a plot, as has been done in some parts of Europe--but not and never for greed.

[NeedleCast]

30. The crime is fairly gruesome

but I gotta admit, I never really understood the point of burying people with all this ceremony. I understand part of that is the non-believer in me who think that when you die, you're dead and you'll have zero concerns with the whereabouts of your body, but even then.

Cremate me and toss the ashes out back. I'll still be dead and wont care.

[Chisox08]

32. i have family buried there and I hope they wasn't moved from their plots