Discarded Corpses Rock Tiny Georgia Town

[Gauracandra]

Discarded Corpses Rock Tiny Georgia Town

AP

Law enforcement vehicles are parked beside a stone sign marking the way to the Tri-State Crematory in Noble, Ga. Saturday.

Sunday, February 17, 2002

 

NOBLE, Ga. — The residents of this tiny Southern town expected their loved ones to rest in peace.

 

Instead, the families of at least 97 people who had died in the past few years discovered their worst fears had come true: The bodies were left to rot in the woods or were stacked in sheds like logs on the grounds of a crematorium near this northwestern Georgia town.

 

"They just piled them on top and then piled more on top. And then they just left them," Dr. Kris Sperry, Georgia's chief medical examiner, said. "I wish we had a good explanation for this, but we don't."

 

The discoveries began Friday when a woman walking her dog found a skull in this hamlet about 25 miles south of Chattanooga, Tenn.

 

The final toll is expected to be at least 200, Sperry said. Sixteen people have been identified so far. Investigators believe the crematory had stacked the corpses for up to 15 years.

 

"We're just barely skimming the surface," Sperry said. "Some of the remains are mummified."

 

Tri-State Crematory 's operator, Ray Brent Marsh, 28, was charged with five counts of theft by deception, a felony, for taking payment for cremations he didn't perform. Walker County and state authorities said other charges are likely.

 

The New York Times on Sunday quoted Vernon Keenan, assistant director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, as saying the fraud charges were all that Marsh could be charged with at the time.

 

"We have laws against desecrating graves, but we can't find one against desecration of bodies," Keenan said. "I guess nobody in the Legislature ever thought something like this could happen."

 

Officials say the 10- to 12-acre property around the crematory could yield several hundred bodies, but the search for more bodies was suspended shortly after dark Saturday. Meanwhile, a special morgue has been set up at the site.

 

"But they've found so many other partial skeletal remains and evidence of graves, we don't know how many more are out there," Georgia Bureau of Investigation spokesman John Bankhead said Saturday night.

 

On Sunday, distraught families began the wrenching task of trying to identify loved ones, filling out Red Cross paperwork to help identify the bodies while several dentists opened their offices to make dental records available.

 

Pat Higdon of Chattanooga, Tenn., made the drive to complete forms for her husband, Tommy Higdon, who died of lung cancer last fall. She said she chose to cremate his body because she couldn't afford a burial.

 

"He looked like a corpse for two months before he died. He just laid there with his mouth open and his eyes open," an emotional Higdon said. "I can't bear to think he still looks like that, only he's lying in a shed or a creek somewhere."

 

When asked why the bodies had not been cremated, Marsh said the crematory incinerator was not working, Bankhead said.

 

The crematory owners, Ray and Clara Marsh, had turned the business over to their son in 1996. The couple has turned over company records to authorities and are cooperating with the investigation, Walker County chief deputy Hill Morrison said.

 

Between 25 and 30 funeral homes in Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama routinely sent bodies to Tri-State for cremation, Bankhead said. Some of the bodies had been delivered to the Tri-State Crematory within the last few days, and some bore hospital toe tags, he said.

 

Some bodies were found in rusty coffins that had evidently been buried and then later disinterred, Bankhead said.

 

"At one time they apparently were buried in the ground in some other cemetery and were dug up and taken to the crematory," he said. "We don't know why that is."

 

Sperry said authorities suspect Brent Marsh may have provided ashes from wood chips to clients as the remains of loved ones. Authorities have reportedly asked families to return ashes for examination.

 

Gov. Roy Barnes declared a state of emergency in Walker County, near the Alabama and Tennessee state lines. The declaration means the state will lend personnel and give funding to local authorities. The Georgia Environmental Protection Division began testing well water from the area for contaminants on Saturday but results were not yet available.

 

Rusty Cash, of East Ridge, Tenn., said he considers himself one of the lucky ones — authorities told him Sunday they had identified the body of his mother, Norma Hutton. After the call, Cash opened the urn he had received from the crematory.

 

"It looked like burnt wood chips as far as I could tell," Cash said.

[Tarun]

The Timing of this sounds too much like deliberate distraction.

Interesting but nowhere near as devastating as ENRON which directly displaced & murdered thousands & is 100% (not just 99%) responsible for bringing down Argentina too.

So far I've heard, YamarAj is now hiring construction crews to expand his chock-filled facilities.

As before, Republicans get 1st crack at choice dwellings.

Long-term discounts: their usual terms

*Dead bodies may be disrespected. Not an attractive scene.

ENRON's vikarma-viphalam is intensely more severe.