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NOBLE (USA), Feb 20: With the stench of rotting flesh in the air, relief workers on Wednesday resumed a grisly search for hundreds of corpses meant for cremation that were dumped on the grounds of a Georgia crematorium.
Equipped with bulldozers and other heavy machinery, state and local police began a fifth consecutive day of digging at the sprawling 6.5 hectare Tri-State Crematorium in Noble, about 160kms northwest of Atlanta.
Investigators have so far found 191 sets of human remains in varying states of decomposition on the grounds of the crematorium, said Buddy Nix, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
“We expect that number to go higher today,” said Nix, who added that investigators intended to expand their search behind the house of Ray Brent Marsh, the 28-year-old operator of the crematorium.
A preliminary search of the area behind Marsh’s house led to the discovery on Tuesday of dozens of decomposing bodies.
Marsh, who originally told investigators that the crematorium furnace had broken down, has been charged with 16 counts of theft by deception for taking payment for cremations never performed. He is being held in a local jail.
If convicted, Marsh could be sentenced to between one and 15 years on each charge.
Authorities have also begun a careful examination of several crematorium vaults, all of which are thought to be filled with unburied corpses. One vault opened on Sunday was found to contain more than 20 sets of human remains.
A portable morgue has been set up at the crematorium, where medical examiners, working with forensic anthropologists and dentists, are going about the painstakingly difficult task of identifying remains, some of which may date back 20 years.
Only 29 bodies have been positively identified so far.
Some of the teams sent to help identify bodies after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York’s World Trade Center are helping with the process, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said.
The Walker County Sheriff’s Department is also investigating reports that the Marsh family had purchased several 3,785 litre septic tanks in recent years. If true, it could foreshadow more ghoulish discoveries in the days ahead.
VAULT YIELDS SURPRISE: One vault was found on Sunday to contain more than 20 bodies.
“I would not be surprised if there are 20 bodies in each of the small vaults and more than that in the others,” Dr. Kris Sperry, Georgia’s chief medical examiner, said in a news conference earlier on Tuesday.
“It could be well over 100 in there,” Sperry said.
The discovery of new bodies on Tuesday came as state and local police intensified their grisly search on the 16 acre (6.5 hectare) grounds of the crematorium. They also said they planned to dredge a nearby lake as part of the effort.
Medical examiners, working with forensic anthropologists and dentists, said they had positively identified 29 bodies, a task made more difficult by the poor condition of some of the remains, which may date back as far as 20 years.
Some of the same teams sent to New York to help identify bodies after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States are helping to identify the bodies and skeletal remains at the crematorium, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said.
Walker County Sheriff Steve Wilson said authorities were also investigating reports the crematorium had purchased several septic tanks in recent years, but said no such devices had been found on the property.
‘DEVASTATING FOR THE FAMILIES’: The Tri-State Crematorium has been in business for about 30 years and routinely received bodies from funeral homes in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee. Marsh has run the business since taking over from his father in the 1990s.
Police suspect the crematorium may have been foregoing cremations for years and passing off wood chips and other substances as ashes.
In a number of cases, ashes provided by the crematorium to relatives turned out to be either powdered cement, dirt or the remains of someone other than the deceased.
The revelations have infuriated the families of the deceased and sparked calls for prompt retribution for Marsh.
“I would like to whip his ass,” said Showyn Walton, who drove about 200 miles (320 km) from Athens, Georgia, to find out whether the urn containing his grandmother’s remains was legitimate.
Police started investigating the crematorium, which is located on land surrounding a residential neighborhood, after an area resident reported finding a human skull late last week in the surrounding woods.
The discovery of the corpses at the crematorium came just months after a funeral company was accused in a Florida lawsuit of digging up bodies and dumping them in the woods to make room for new burials.—Reuters
