Knowing this, all of those present during the excavation expected to see nothing but bones once the casket lid was opened. Their findings were remarkable.ĭecomposition of the human body begins almost immediately and it tends to be a rapid process. Finally, the church and cemetery agreed to go through with the task to appease the elder Buccola. This started a six-year battle by her mother to have Julia’s body exhumed. These nightmares consisted of her daughter begging and pleading to be removed from the earth from where she had recently been buried, as if she had been buried alive. Now she is remembered by a whole city.Īfter her death, Julia’s mother began having nightmares. At the time, she was remembered by her surviving family and a newly widowed husband. She was buried in her wedding dress under a nondescript grave, sharing her coffin with her baby. Julia’s life was tragically taken at the young age of 20 while giving birth to a stillborn infant. On the opposite side of the cemetery from Al Capone is the beautiful gravesite of Julia Buccola Petta, who is considered a modern-day saint. This dichotomy may not be more stark when considering that criminals like Charles Dion O’Bannion, “Machine Gun Jack” McGurn, Roger Touhy, Frank “The Enforcer” Nitti, Sam Giancana and even Al Capone is buried at the same cemetery as religious leaders like Cardinal Bernardin. Warring Mafia henchmen and leaders alike, are resting peacefully alongside their rivals. Valentine’s Day Massacre in interred in the same ground as some of their victims. Nowhere is this more true than in Mount Carmel Cemetery where the executors of the St. No matter how glamorous or ordinary, how wealthy or struggling, or how we lived our lives, we all physically end up in the same place. Perhaps no cemetery illustrates the equality that death brings to all of us. Mike Torello.Both Jenny Wade and Julia Buccola are immortalized today and given nearly sainthood status as two women who died tragically and have left behind some legendary stories,įirst, we will go to Mount Carmel Cemetery in the south Chicago suburb of Hillside, Illinois. Farina played hard-bitten Chicago cop Lt. My Dad was a huge fan of classic 60s automobiles and the show was set in that era, so he watched every episode.
I first became aware of Dennis Farina from the 1986 NBC TV show Crime Story. His grave is marked by a simple flat stone that took me a little time to find.
He’s buried in the far Northwest corner of the cemetery, not far from Sam Giancana’s mausoleum. There’s one more resident of Mount Carmel that I want to talk about. I didn’t see anybody during my visit. But it was broad daylight on a hot, humid day so that’s not surprising. Some people have claimed to see a woman in white visiting Julia’s grave. Since Filomena’s name is on it not once but twice, perhaps she was looking for a little bit of attention herself.
Son Henry grudgingly ended up paying for that as well. So why did Filomena go to all that trouble? Some think it wasn’t nightmares at all but that she wanted a new, more elaborate monument to take the place of Julia’s much smaller gravestone. Julia looks amazingly, uhm, fresh for having been underground for all that time. You can see it in the photograph installed on the new monument that was placed there after she was reburied. Six years after her death, Julia Buccola Petta’s casket was exhumed and opened.
That means “a body that does not decay is called incorruptible”, a condition observed in several saints.
Around this photo are the words “Questa fotografia presa dopo 6 anni morta”. You can see the empty hole and dirt in the background. This photo was taken after Julia’s casket was exhumed and opened.