Anger and Anguish in a Georgia Town

NOBLE, Ga. -- Trey Crawford, 18, liked to pause by the curio cabinet that held the box containing what he thought were his father's ashes. He would think about how much he missed his dad in the year since his death, how sorry he was that he had died so young, at 50, how much he would like to talk to him again.

"I liked to stop there and think about him," said Crawford, a high school senior from Signal Mountain, Tenn. "But now I guess I have to think of those ashes as insignificant. I know where his spirit is. That's not him."

Like hundreds of other people who were stunned to discover that the dying wishes of their loved ones had been betrayed by Tri-State Crematory, Crawford is trying desperately to find some kind of solace. But no one -- not the investigators haunted by the stacks of uncremated corpses strewn on the company grounds, not state and local officials trying to find out how the operator was able to hide his grisly secrets for so long, and certainly not the families tormented by the disrespect shown their departed mothers and fathers and siblings -- has ever faced such an ordeal.

"It's a situation beyond description," said John Bankhead of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. "I don't think Stephen King could come up with something like this."

Beginning with an anonymous telephone call on Feb. 14 that bones had been seen on the property, the case has expanded dramatically each day. At first, officials said there might be as many as 80 decomposing bodies there, strewn in the woods, lying on the floors of sheds, some in Sunday-best attire, others naked in hospital sheets and toe tags. Some of the corpses were mummified, as much as 15 years old; the latest had arrived for cremation on Valentine's Day. By Thursday, authorities were putting the estimated corpse count in the hundreds and were preparing to dredge a three-acre pond that already has yielded a human torso and a skull near its banks.

"I can't even begin to guess how many bodies there are," said Georgia's chief medical examiner, Kris Sperry, who has been on the scene since Feb. 15. "It's incomprehensible."

As of late Friday afternoon, authorities had recovered 293 bodies but conceded that they did not know how many more they would find.

Everything about the case staggers the imagination, not least the fact that the owners of the business were among the most admired families in this rural northwest Georgia community. Although only Brent Marsh, 28, a former football player at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, has been arrested in the case, investigators also want to interview his father, Ray, a retired postal worker who expanded his grave-digging sideline in 1982 to start the crematory business, and his mother, Clara, a retired educator who has been Walker County Citizen of the Year and chairman of the county Democratic Party.

"I've known them since back in the '40s, and they are fine people, very good citizens," said William Willis, owner of Willis Funeral Home in Dalton, Ga., who has sent 16 corpses to Tri-State for cremation since 1985. "This has caught us all off-balance. We didn't know they had any problems."

Before he stopped talking to authorities, Brent Marsh, who took over the business from his parents in 1996, said the incinerator had broken down. But that explanation only opens up more disturbing questions: How could Marsh, who, like his parents, lives in a house on the 16-acre crematory grounds, eat his dinner and go to bed at night, allegedly knowing that the rotting corpses were as close by as his back yard? Why would anyone go to the trouble of digging pits and encasing some of the corpses in concrete vaults when it would surely have been easier to repair or replace the incinerator and burn them as promised? And how could anyone give a grieving, trusting family a box containing concrete dust or potting soil or even someone else's ashes?

"The only thing I can say is, why did he keep accepting bodies if he didn't have a way to dispose of them?" said Pat Allen, 58, a neighbor on Center Point Road and a first cousin of Ray Marsh, who said she is as baffled as anyone. "What could have been going through his mind?"

Every day, before resuming the horrific task of searching the Tri-State grounds and recovering the corpses, the team of investigators pauses for a quiet moment. "We have a prayer right out there on the crime scene," said Walker County Sheriff Steve Wilson. "Just because we wear a badge and carry a gun doesn't mean we don't have feelings."

No one can approach this case without being profoundly affected, without thinking, "What if that were my mother or father or daughter or son lying exposed and discarded, denied the dignity of death?"

"I put myself in their place, those poor families," Allen said. "If we had decided to have my mama cremated, she'd be laying up there, too."

Noble, an unincorporated community of several hundred people about 25 miles south of Chattanooga, does not even show up on many maps of the area. Located on Route 27, it is little more than a crossroads, including a service station, a socks outlet and a barbecue shack. Center Point Road leads directly from the main highway, with a small Baptist church and frame-and-brick homes tucked into huge, tree-shaded yards.

Neighbors say, half-apologetically, that they noticed nothing amiss. After the news broke, they realized, they said, that they had not seen smoke coming from the crematory for perhaps as long as years. "We never got into their business. We never really went down into the woods. We didn't like to be over there, the fact that they were supposed to be burning bodies," said neighbor Jessica Johnson, 22, a niece of Ray Marsh.

But someone apparently ventured into the woods, and made a terrible discovery.

In November, the Atlanta office of the Environmental Protection Agency first received an anonymous telephone call about "body parts" seen on the property, a tip that the agency turned over to the Walker County Sheriff's Department, said EPA spokesman Carl Terry. Sheriff's deputies reportedly went to the property but did not have a search warrant and came away with nothing. A second call came on Feb. 14, Terry said. "This time, we decided to go up and investigate ourselves."

The following day, two EPA agents, permitted as federal officers to do an "open-fields" investigation without a search warrant, found a human skull. Immediately, a full probe was launched, more and more discarded bodies began to turn up and, soon, tiny Noble had made international news. The community was besieged with reporters -- and sickened family members demanding to know what had happened to their relatives' remains. Authorities say more than 30 funeral homes within a 200-mile radius used the crematory.

Marsh, who is being held in the county jail, has been charged so far with 16 felony counts of theft by deception, which means that he accepted cremation fees ranging from $200 to $1,500 per case without performing the service. State legislators rushed to introduce bills that would plug the holes in state law that allowed crematories such as Tri-State, which dealt with funeral homes instead of the public, to go unregulated. State officials estimate that the investigation has already cost $5 million and would cost much more before it is finished.

And before the week was out, the first lawsuits were filed by family members against the crematory.

Marshall Wilson, an auto mechanic from Chattanooga, knows it is wrong, he said, but he can't help but imagine what he would like to do to Brent Marsh. "I am so mad," said Wilson, 47. His brother, who died on Jan. 15 at age 65, is presumably among the discarded corpses. "I want to put my hands around his throat and choke him. Those people ain't got no heart, and they ain't got no sympathy. The sheriff told us he said he was going to try to make it right for the families. There's no way anybody can make it right."

For most of the victims, still trying to come to grips with the loss of their relatives, the crematory scandal is an unimaginable blow to their recovery. Karen Crook could barely speak as she thought about her father, Allen Risley of Fairmount, Ga., who died in February 1996 at the age of 64. He had asked to be cremated, the first in his family to do so.

"My mother is devastated," said Crook, 25. "She's not even able to come up here. I don't know which is worse. It's been six years since he died, and that was just now starting to settle, and now this. It's something you should never have to go through."

Many of the relatives, including Crook, sought comfort the other evening at a prayer service they had asked to have, held at Oakwood Baptist Church in nearby Chickamauga, Ga. Pastor Darrell Henry tried his best to offer them a helping hand.

"God understands your pain," he said. "But I wonder, if in heaven, God is not shedding a tear for all of you who are here."

Crematorium manager Brent Marsh, 28, is charged with theft by deception for allegedly accepting cremation fees without performing the service.A casket is raised at Tri-State Crematory in Noble, Ga. As of Friday, 293 decomposing bodies had been found there.Leatha Shropshrier yells as sheriff's deputies transport Tri-State Crematory manager Brent Marsh back to jail after a court hearing in La Fayette, Ga. The remains of Shropshrier's mother were among those recovered by authorities.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZK6zr8eirZ5noKS5qsDInKpoamBlf3B8kWhpbWeRo7SmvoyapZ1lkaO0trXSoWSipl2Weqixzqueopldqby4uo6cmZtqlWx%2FcnmXmpuaZWRphnF5mHFobWWTm4VyrZCamHJtYZh8

VBlogX

Anger and Anguish in a Georgia Town