Cemetery probe nets arrests

ROME (AP) — Italian police have arrested 10 people while investigating the alleged control by mobsters of a cemetery in northern Italy.

State police on Tuesday alleged that two clans of the ‘Ndrangheta crime syndicate determined which firms were allowed to perform burials or construction work like erecting mausoleums at the cemetery in Modena, a town in the affluent region of Emilia-Romagna.

The ‘Ndrangheta syndicate is based in southern Italy and awash in cocaine trafficking proceeds. But mobsters have increasingly infiltrated Italy’s productive north in search of more revenue and legitimate businesses to use as fronts for laundering money.

In 2018, a regional court convicted 125 people who were suspected ‘Ndrangheta members or associates on charges of Mafia association and colluding with mobsters.

The information leading to Tuesday’s arrests came from intercepted phone conversations and from turncoat mobsters, Italian news reports said.

Chicago sees deadly weekend

CHICAGO (AP) — Chicago saw its deadliest Memorial Day weekend for gun violence since 2015, a jarring reminder that even a coronavirus pandemic and a statewide stay-at-home order cannot halt shootings in the city.

“The violence throughout the city on Memorial Day weekend was nothing short of alarming,” Chicago police Superintendent David Brown told the media Tuesday after the first major test of his tenure as the city’s top officer ended with 49 people being shot, 10 of them fatally.

The weekend highlighted that even as the pandemic has many people staying home, homicides in the nation’s three largest cities have been on the rise.

According to Chicago police crime statistics posted online, between Jan. 1 and May 24, the nation’s third-largest city had 200 homicides, compared with 176 during the same period last year. The number of shootings climbed from 679 to 826.

Remains found; couple arrested

KINGSTON, Tenn. (AP) — A Tennessee couple is facing charges after skeletal remains of a child were found buried in their yard.

Michael Anthony Gray Sr., 63, and his wife, Shirley Ann Gray, 60, were arrested Monday, 9th Judicial District Attorney General Russell Johnson said in a statement to news outlets. The Roane County couple is charged with aggravated child abuse, especially aggravated kidnapping, aggravated child neglect and abuse of a corpse, the statement said.

Roane County authorities originally responded Friday when someone found one of the Grays’ children walking alone along a road near their home, Johnson said.

The girl’s remains were found Saturday. Officials don’t know yet how she died. An autopsy was planned.

Three children, ages 11 to 15, were removed from the couple’s custody by the state Department of Children’s Services, Johnson said. They are not the couple’s biological children, but the couple had legal custody of them, he said. The Grays remained in custody.