NOBLE, Ga., Feb. 19 (UPI) -- Human remains were found Tuesday at the home of a Georgia crematorium operator already in jail on charges that he stacked bodies in buildings and dumped them in woods instead of properly disposing of them.
Authorities said they have recovered 149 bodies from the grounds of the Tri-State Crematorium, but the total does not include more than 100 bodies found in several concrete vaults or the remains found at the nearby home of Ray Brent Marsh.
Walker County Sheriff Steve Wilson said he could not explain why the bodies had been improperly disposed of.
"That's the million-dollar question, I guess, is why did this happen?" he said.
Investigators said they were looking into Marsh's purchase of several 1,000-gallon septic tanks. "Four had been installed on the property," Wilson said. Permits had been requested for several others.
More than a dozen Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents who had gone to Marsh's home to execute a search warrant for business records discovered a body in a coffin in the backyard.
Assistant GBI Director Vernon Keenan said agents then found bodies and body parts buried under several mounds in Marsh's yard. Workers used a backhoe to remove the coffin and dug into pits estimated to be 8 feet deep.
More caskets and remains were found Tuesday on the 16-acre grounds of the crematorium in northwest Georgia about 90 miles northwest of Atlanta. Officials also plan to search a lake near the mortuary, using an underwater, infrared camera.
Dr. Kris Sperry, Georgia state medical examiner, said 27 of the bodies recovered so far have been identified. He said some relatives were given urns that contained concrete dust or potting soil instead of the ashes of loved ones.
"There's nobody here that's not sickened by this," Walker County Coroner Dewayne Wilson said. "There are other remains out there and it's well over 200."
Walker is being held in the Walker County Jail on 16 felony counts of theft by deception. No court hearing has been scheduled because Marsh does not have an attorney, Walker County District Attorney Buzz Franklin Jr. said.
The sheriff said additional charges are likely in the case, possibly against Marsh's parents. "If it goes back 10, 15 or 20 years ... certainly another family member would have to have been involved," he said.
Two lawsuits seeking class-action status were filed against the crematorium in Georgia and Tennessee on Tuesday.
"This is awful," said Bob Vandenbergh, president of the National Funeral Directors Association, who traveled to the crematory site to offer assistance to families.
"The discovery made at Tri-State is an atrocity. Our members uniformly condemn the unimaginable practices carried out by that crematory, whose owners are not licensed funeral directors," the association said in a statement.
A counselor from the Georgia Department of Human Resources said family members "feel violated" by the discoveries.
"They entrusted their loved ones to a funeral home. Now they don't know if the ashes and the remains they have are the person they think it is," Ann Davies said.
