- (AFP) - Crematorium manager Ray Brent Marsh, whom
authorities
have accused of dumping bodies in the woods instead of cremating them,
was being arraigned on five counts of theft by deception, law enforcement
officials in this southeastern US state said.
-
- Authorities said Marsh, 28, accepted payment from
families
to cremate the bodies of friends and loved ones, but apparently dumped
the bodies in the woods or in storage sheds surrounding the crematorium
instead.
-
- The Atlanta Herald-Constitution said Sunday that as many
as 100 corpses had been found in the woods near the 10-to-12-acre
(four-to-five-hectare)
Tri-State Crematory in Noble, Georgia, some 150 miles northwest of
Atlanta.
-
- Some of the bodies were discovered with toe tags from
the hospitals where they died, while others were found in rusty
coffins.
-
- Walker County, Georgia sheriffs said Marsh contends that
the crematorium was broken.
-
- County officials declined to comment until after the
hearing.
-
- Authorities said the search could yield hundreds of
bodies,
dating back as far as two decades, according to media reports.
-
- The Herald-Constitution reported that some bodies, still
dressed in funeral attire, had apparently been at the site for just a few
days, while others were so old they had become mummified.
-
- A dog walker stumbled over a skull on Friday, prompting
authorities to inspect the site and leading to the grisly discovery.
-
- "There were bodies stacked like cordwood, just
discarded
and thrown in a pile," Vernon Keenan, assistant director of the
Georgia
Bureau of Investigation, told the New York Times.
-
- According to media reports, the facility's furnace had
broken down several years ago and the owners could not afford the necessary
repairs.
-
- Families who believed they had received the cremated
ashes of their deceased relatives had in fact received a mixture of burned
wood chips and dirt, officials said. The fraud charges were brought in
the absence of any state laws barring inappropriate treatment of corpses,
they added.
-
- Marsh's parents, Ray and Clara Marsh, who own the
business,
were not charged, according to news reports.
-
- Georgia authorities issued an emergency declaration to
expedite recovery of the bodies. Officials have set up a makeshift morgue
on the site and began moving the newer bodies to a site near the
crematorium
where families could identify the remains.
-
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