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Sicilian police said Monday they had arrested a former gravedigger and were investigating 18 others accused of reselling burial sites after removing the corpses already interred in them.
The former gravedigger's assistant was also arrested Monday in the investigation dating from 2023 for alleged corruption and bribery in Trapani, on the west coast of the Italian island, police announced in a news release.
Police said they banned three funeral parlors from operating in the city, whose cemetery has been plagued in recent years with delays and complaints from locals.
In their probe, police found that the municipal gravedigger hindered an outside company brought in to manage the services, instead directing three mortuaries with whom he conspired to carry out burials, exhumations and the transfers of remains, in exchange for a percentage of the profit.
He made decisions "on extraordinary exhumation procedures," in which municipal burial sites were cleared of bodies so they could be resold, police said in a statement.
"In this way, he would propose quick burials, in exchange for sums of money, which he called 'coffee for the burial director'," police said in a statement.
He is also accused of bringing in his own bricklayer to do work on private burial chapels, offering citizens a discount through the non-payment of city tax, and alerting compliant local florists of freshly laid floral arrangements on tombs, which they took and resold.
Police also believe the ex-worker took valuables, such as gold jewelry, from the bodies of those to be buried.
Police also posted a video on social media, showing officers at the cemetery as well as surveillance footage of workers
Contacted by AFP, police said they could not comment on what became of the corpses that were removed.
But a local media report from February 2024 indicated that in at least one case, a family who found their relative's burial place with a new name on it ultimately located their loved-one's corpse in a bag, along with others, in another part of the cemetery.
During the investigation, 25 cases were documented, including 10 incidents of corruption, police said.
"In reference to these, an equal number of private citizens were reported who would have knowingly made an illicit pact with the undertaker to ensure their loved ones 'accelerated' burial procedures in exchange for money," police said.
Additionally, authorities said a medical examiner is suspected of having helped the undertaker, in some cases falsely certifying the decomposition of the body, and in other cases omitting required reports.
Cemeteries and funeral parlors are often controlled by the mafia in areas of Italy where those criminal organizations are entrenched, or by corrupt local officials.
Two weeks ago, the former custodian of the cemetery of Tropea, in the southern Italian region of Calabria, was sentenced to five years in prison, with three years and six months handed to his son, for operating what news reports called a "cemetery of horrors."
The pair had removed decomposing corpses to make way for new burials, and were captured on police surveillance videos dismembering the bodies with saws and knives, before throwing them away or burning them.
They were arrested in February 2021 for the scheme prosecutors said had gone on for years.
SOURCE: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gravedigger-arrested-reselling-burial-sites-removing-corpses-sicily/
The former gravedigger's assistant was also arrested Monday in the investigation dating from 2023 for alleged corruption and bribery in Trapani, on the west coast of the Italian island, police announced in a news release.
Police said they banned three funeral parlors from operating in the city, whose cemetery has been plagued in recent years with delays and complaints from locals.
In their probe, police found that the municipal gravedigger hindered an outside company brought in to manage the services, instead directing three mortuaries with whom he conspired to carry out burials, exhumations and the transfers of remains, in exchange for a percentage of the profit.
He made decisions "on extraordinary exhumation procedures," in which municipal burial sites were cleared of bodies so they could be resold, police said in a statement.
"In this way, he would propose quick burials, in exchange for sums of money, which he called 'coffee for the burial director'," police said in a statement.
He is also accused of bringing in his own bricklayer to do work on private burial chapels, offering citizens a discount through the non-payment of city tax, and alerting compliant local florists of freshly laid floral arrangements on tombs, which they took and resold.
Police also believe the ex-worker took valuables, such as gold jewelry, from the bodies of those to be buried.
Police also posted a video on social media, showing officers at the cemetery as well as surveillance footage of workers
Contacted by AFP, police said they could not comment on what became of the corpses that were removed.
But a local media report from February 2024 indicated that in at least one case, a family who found their relative's burial place with a new name on it ultimately located their loved-one's corpse in a bag, along with others, in another part of the cemetery.
During the investigation, 25 cases were documented, including 10 incidents of corruption, police said.
"In reference to these, an equal number of private citizens were reported who would have knowingly made an illicit pact with the undertaker to ensure their loved ones 'accelerated' burial procedures in exchange for money," police said.
Additionally, authorities said a medical examiner is suspected of having helped the undertaker, in some cases falsely certifying the decomposition of the body, and in other cases omitting required reports.
Cemeteries and funeral parlors are often controlled by the mafia in areas of Italy where those criminal organizations are entrenched, or by corrupt local officials.
Two weeks ago, the former custodian of the cemetery of Tropea, in the southern Italian region of Calabria, was sentenced to five years in prison, with three years and six months handed to his son, for operating what news reports called a "cemetery of horrors."
The pair had removed decomposing corpses to make way for new burials, and were captured on police surveillance videos dismembering the bodies with saws and knives, before throwing them away or burning them.
They were arrested in February 2021 for the scheme prosecutors said had gone on for years.
SOURCE: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gravedigger-arrested-reselling-burial-sites-removing-corpses-sicily/
