[CrimsonTide4]

Innocent Plea in Ga. Corpse Dumping Case
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By BILL POOVEY, Associated Press Writer

LAFAYETTE, Ga. - A former crematory operator accused of dumping
decaying bodies around his family business pleaded innocent Tuesday
to some charges and contested the validity of hundreds of others.



Ray Brent Marsh, 29, faces multiple counts of burial service fraud,
making false statements, abuse of a dead body and theft. He remains
free on bond.


At Tuesday's arraignment hearing, Marsh pleaded not guilty to 122
counts of burial service fraud and 47 counts of making false
statements.


His lawyer, Ken Poston, said Marsh was withholding pleas on 179
counts of abuse of a body and 439 counts of theft by taking,
describing those charges as "defective" because the law does not
support them.


Marsh, who took over the Tri-State Crematory from his father in 1997,
is accused of stashing 334 bodies at the site in Noble in
northwestern Georgia.


When investigators searched the property in February 2002, they found
heaps of decaying bodies that were supposed to be cremated — many
spilling out of a storage shed, scattered around the crematory
building and in nearby woods. About 225 bodies have been identified.


In addition to the criminal case, hundreds of people are suing Marsh
for failing to perform cremations.


A grand jury indicted the former University of Tennessee at
Chattanooga football player on the 787 felony counts last month. No
trial date was set; the defense is seeking a change of venue, citing
pretrial publicity and other factors.


Lisa Cash, 33, received an urn that she thought was filled with the
cremated remains of her mother, Norma Jean Hutton, who died in 2001.
Instead, the powder was concrete.


"Every time I see his face I think about my mother laying out in the
backyard," Cash said after the arraignment.