Dozens of bodies destined for cremation found in Georgia

Investigators scouring the woods behind a crematory in rural Georgia found scores of decomposing corpses on Saturday, including at least 93 intact bodies and other remains scattered along the ground.

“You’d walk an area and see a skull here, a leg bone there, a rib cage over there. It was very gruesome,” said John Bankhead, a spokesman for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

Brent Marsh, the operator of the Tri-State Crematory, was arrested and taken into custody in Walker County, in the northwest corner of Georgia. He was charged with theft by deception; authorities allege that he contracted with funeral homes in three states to cremate bodies, but instead dumped the corpses in the crematory, in storage sheds or in the woods on his 16-acre property. Marsh had been running the crematory for several years on behalf of his parents, who are prominent civic activists in the community.

Some of the bodies apparently had arrived within the past few weeks; they were clad in hospital gowns, with identification tags around their toes. Others had clearly been there for years.

One man, so decomposed he looked like a mummy, was laid out in his blue funeral suit in the box used for cremation. Other corpses were in their caskets, apparently unopened since they had been delivered to the crematory. A few had been buried in the crematory grounds.

“The worst horror movie you’ve ever seen  imagine that 10 times worse,” Walker County Coroner Dewayne Wilson told the local media. “That’s what I’m dealing with.”

The scene was so overwhelming that Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes declared a state of emergency in Walker County and sent in dozens of state investigators. By late Saturday, they had identified 13 corpses, discovered 80 others intact and collected uncounted numbers of bones.

“And this is just what they can see,” said Lisa Ray of the Georgia Emergency Management Agency. “They haven’t even started excavating.”

Families vent

More than 100 investigators were to comb the crematory grounds throughout the weekend, while grief counselors waited in a local church to counsel families whose loved ones had been sent to the Tri-State Crematory in the small, unincorporated community of Noble, near the town of Rock Springs.

Frantic to learn the fate of their relatives, family members bombarded funeral homes with questions, venting fury and horror.

While several of the corpses were identified from toe tags, many more were decomposed to bare bones. Authorities said they have no reason to suspect homicide in any case; they believe all of the remains come from bodies brought to the site for cremation. But there is no chance they will be able to identify them all.

Call to EPA prompts probe

The probe of the Tri-State Crematory, which serves northwest Georgia and southeast Alabama and Tennessee, began Friday, when the federal Environmental Protection Agency in Atlanta received an anonymous call complaining about the stench from the property. EPA investigators visited the site and found a human skull. They then called in local investigators, who found body after body, working by flashlight late into the evening.

Ray and Clara Marsh, who have owned the Tri-State Crematory for about 30 years, are respected in the community, which one local described as “like every other small Southern town” Â quiet and slow-paced and friendly, “with everything as it was a long time ago.”

Clara Marsh, a retired teacher, is well-known for her work combating drug abuse in the schools and recently was honored as citizen of the year for Walker County. Earlier this year, Ray Marsh served on a panel of the region’s most prominent citizens.

Authorities said the Marshes, who are in their 60s, turned management of the crematory over to their son, Brent Marsh, around 1996. That is when the corpses allegedly began to pile up, Bankhead said.

But Bill McGill, a former county coroner, suggested that problems with the crematory stretch back even earlier. He said he repeatedly complained to state officials in the early 1990s that the Tri-State Crematory was not licensed and did not have a state-licensed funeral director on the premises, as required.

Authorities said Brent Marsh has been cooperating with the investigation. He could face up to five years behind bars for each count of theft by deception, a felony. So far he has been charged with five counts, but officials expect more to come.