Cemetery operators open new scandal in a New Providence – Death in the Graveyard???
Nassau, Bahamas — ‘Backshots’ on the desk of a cemetery office tell the complete story of what is happening down at a popular cemetery here in the country and when you discover what we know, legal papers will fly.
Deep dark BP investigation into a cemetery reveal some chilling details and could land a prominent family with ties to the memorial park in bankruptcy.
We can tell you the stories are horrific and what is being unfolded on Bahamas Press is no joking matter at all.
According to a daughter, whose father was buried in a famous graveyard, she had no way to find the burial plot of her deceased father who was interred in the cemetery some three years ago.
“I went to the plot only to discover that there was another name registered to the plot. I asked the operator at the park to please help me locate my father’s resting place but, after hours and hours of trying to locate him, nothing turned up.”
Several family members have made similar complaints and, from the looks of things, a collective class action lawsuit could be headed to court.
The story is a familiar one where the operator of a cemetery in Chicago got 19 years for reselling funeral plots. The incidents opened a major investigation where families discovered their loved ones were tossed out of their graves and replaced by new clients. The crime was disgusting and we believe here in the Bahamas it should be faced with the full brunt of the law.
When the Huffington Post broke the story its reported how The Burr Oak Cemetery, where lynching victim Emmett Till, legendary blues singers Dinah Washington and Willie Dixon and thousands of others were buried, is one of the Chicago area’s most storied black cemeteries. But its legacy was forever tainted with the discovery that four cemetery workers had unearthed more than 200 graves from the front of the cemetery, including Till’s, dumped them in unmarked, mass graves and resold the original plots to new families.
But that’s not all and when investigators move onto the ground of the Bahamian graveyard scandal is going to rock the nation.
BP has looked deeper into the operations at the park, and what we have uncovered is indeed unbelievable. As many as six persons could be buried in one plot, and no one has any clue as to who is in the ground.
Records at the cemetery reveal some double plots have been sold and resold to families who have no idea what has happened to their loved ones and possibly an even bigger scam could be underway.
One source in the establishment where our investigations have led us has uncovered something that could be criminal and could possibly land directors at the park in jail.
According to our inside source who gave us just a tip of the iceberg that has emerged: “Late last year a woman’s young husband was buried in the cemetery. They were also from a very prominent family. They ordered an expensive $10,000 headstone to mark the grave of the young man. Yet to this very day they cannot locate the stone or the plot where he was supposedly buried.
“There is a practice nowadays at the cemetery to not cover up the bodies when burial services are complete. They simply tell the family it will be done in the morning. However, if you look inside the graves, they are not prepared – plastered or entombed inside. Sometimes the bodies are removed out of the ground after the funeral, even after the gravesite has been blessed, and carried elsewhere.
“Someone must investigate this and families who have bought plots over the years should find their way back into the cemetery to see if they can find their relatives interred therein.”
Bahamas Press was informed the former manager believed to be at the heart of the chaos now unfolding has been removed from the cemetery and replaced by a new manager who has no idea what has happened to the deceased who are now victims in this Cemetery Scandal.
We have learnt a relative of a former Cabinet Minister now has the cemetery in court which is as a result of a number of plots previously sold to families that have been resold to other families.
A song written by Janis Ian and sung by Celine Dion had these words:
Remember those who win the game
Lose the love they sought to gain
In debitures of quality and dubious integrity
Their small-town eyes will gape at you
In dull surprise when payment due
Exceeds accounts received at seventeen…
All we at BP says is this: If you don’t cry on this one when you find out what we know, you ga holler!
