Years After Body Stacking Scandal, Families Say Problems Persist At Homewood Memorial Gardens Cemetery

HOMEWOOD, Ill. (CBS) -- Homewood Memorial Gardens is a south suburban cemetery that made headlines for all the wrong reasons back in 2011.

Now, some people with loved ones buried there say there are still problems today.

CBS 2 went to the cemetery and found sinking headstones, a loose, crooked marker for a World War II veteran and multiple graves without any grass.

"Oh my God – I can't. This is horrible," Marketa Kristofek said.

Kristofek has two loved ones buried at the cemetery. Their graves look better than some of the others, but she said she's concerned about what's being done to maintain the grounds.

"This is worse than I've ever seen it," she said.

Loretta Franklin, whose father and grandmother are buried at the cemetery, said she is also frustrated by the condition of the cemetery.

"It makes you feel upset, angry, mad," Franklin said.

Back in 2011, the Cook County Sheriff's Office investigated the cemetery for stacking multiple bodies in large graves.

They were indigents -- or poor people who could not afford a plot. The cemetery used to have a contract with the county to bury indigents.

"There is no rhyme or reason, there is no grid system, there's nothing out there," Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said in 2011.

The bodies had to be dug up, identified and properly reburied.

In 2012, CBS 2 Investigator Pam Zekman looked into more burial issues at the same cemetery.

Now, more than seven years later, CBS 2 has learned that cemetery has been on probation with the State of Illinois since last fall for failing to properly map out the grounds.

We asked a Homewood Memorial Gardens manager, Kelly McCarthy, about the concerns.

She says things have improved significantly since the 2011 controversy.

"You say things are getting better, but you are on probation," CBS 2's Tim McNicholas said. "How do you kind of balance it out?"

"Well, we're doing advanced mapping. That's going to help drastically for people to come visit. They will have a different type of map, and they should be able to locate their loved ones," McCarthy said.

McCarthy said she wasn't the manager back in 2011, and now the former owner's son has taken over as the owner.

She said many of the graves without grass are new -- so new that they don't have headstones yet.

As for the ones with older headstones, she said the grass hasn't grown there despite their efforts.
"Sometimes it takes and sometimes it don't. So we just continue to re-dirt and seed," McCarthy said. "That's part of maintaining the grounds."

CBS 2 showed her the holes in the dirt.

"(The staff) will dirt it completely but sometimes the ground does settle from wetness; from winter, rain, or you know, anything – it could make it settle," she said. "Otherwise, there could be an animal that has now dug down into it to try to make a home."

She said her staff is always on the lookout for problems like sinking markers and, if families report them to their office, they're happy to get to work.

We pointed out one crooked marker next to Kristofek's grandma and McCarthy said they're on it.

"Yes, we would fix the headstone," she said.

McCarthy also said that bad weather can sometimes make the dirt graves look worse.

She said their county contract to bury indigents ended a few years ago. She also said they no longer stack multiple people in graves.