Four workers - a manager and three gravediggers – at the Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, south of the city, have been charged with dismembering a human body.

"The elaborate scheme that spans several years involves the digging up of numerous graves and re-selling those plots to unsuspecting customers," Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said in a statement.

Dart said the graves desecrated were extremely old and those that did not have regular visitors. When preparing the site for a funeral, the gravediggers would dig up the plot, many times breaking the vault or casket.

When this occurred, they would remove the remains and dump them in an unused area of the cemetery, Dart added.

"The funeral would take place, with the deceased being buried on top of what remained. The money paid would be split between the workers involved," Dart said. About USD 300,000 are likely to have been netted during the years.

The cemetery is the resting place of prominent black Americans including 14 year old Emmett Till, whose brutal 1955 slaying in Mississippi ignited the civil rights movement, as also of blues singer Dinah Washington and boxing champion Ezzard Charles.

"The greedy acts of a few individuals have disturbed the resting places of many individuals and will no doubt cause emotional distress to their family members. We will do our best to expedite this recovery effort and with the assistance of local clergy, properly and finally lay to rest all those who were unearthed," the statement said.

An investigation was launched in May when the cemetery's Arizona-based owners contacted the sheriff's department after discovering a large discrepancy in the cemetery's finances.

Subsequent interviews with other cemetery employees revealed the grisly scheme.