Now what in the world was he going to do with all those bodies?

[pinkice8]

I live in GA and this is extremely terrible. The bodies were not embalmed because you cannot embalm a body that you will cremate. Embalming fluid is flamable. Also, authorities found out that the incinerator was working and the part of that he said was broken (if it really was broken) would have only cost him $60 to get replaced.

[Steeltrap]

Ga. Crematory Operator Leaves Jail
Tue Aug 27, 9:10 PM ET
By MARK NIESSE, Associated Press Writer

LaFAYETTE, Ga. (AP) - A crematory operator accused of dumping hundreds of human remains was released from jail Tuesday as about a dozen people, mostly family members of the dead, shouted and jeered at him.

Ray Brent Marsh walked straight to the car of his attorney, who took off for the home of Marsh's parents. He will be confined there while he awaits an indictment and trial.

Marsh, 29, had been in custody since Feb. 17 for allegedly accepting money for cremations but never performing them. He's charged with 398 felony counts, including theft by deception and abuse of a body.

The operator of Tri-State Crematory had received many death threats in the months since his incarceration. Even so, Sheriff Steve Wilson said they wouldn't protect him beyond the parking lot of the jail and courthouse.

The crowd gathered outside the jail only saw Marsh for a moment, but they said they wanted him to feel their anger.

"Every time he eats, drinks and sleeps, I want him to see our faces. I don't want anything to happen to him — that would be too easy," said Melissa Crawford, whose uncle was supposed to have been cremated.

Marsh was held more than five months before bail was set at $159,000 on July 25, but his family needed an extra month to raise the $39,000 cash portion. He had a property bond of $120,000.

Complete and partial human remains of 339 bodies were found around the crematory property in February in storage buildings, in burial vaults, and in pits and the surrounding forest.

There had been threats Marsh would be shot or hanged when he was released from jail, said his lawyer, Ken Poston.

"My initial request was to go out the back door in the middle of the night. The sheriff said 'You're going out the front door,'" Poston said.

As a condition of his bail, Marsh will be confined to his parents' house and will wear an ankle monitor that electronically tracks his movements. Police will be sent if he leaves the area of the house without permission.

Deputies will make three unannounced visits each week and give him random alcohol and drug tests until his trial date, which has not been set.

Marsh took over the crematory near the Tennessee state line from his parents in 1996.

[CrimsonTide4]

Innocent Plea in Ga. Corpse Dumping Case
1 hour, 4 minutes ago Add U.S. National - AP to My Yahoo!


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.

[Honeykiss1974]

Legal Settlement Reached in Crematory Case
2 hours, 9 minutes ago Add Oddly Enough - Reuters to My Yahoo!

ATLANTA (Reuters) - An insurance company and 58 funeral homes in the South have agreed to pay nearly $40 million to the relatives of more than 300 people whose bodies were found scattered on a Georgia crematory's grounds, a law firm representing the families said on Thursday.

The relatives filed a class-action lawsuit in 2002 after hundreds of corpses meant for cremation were found dumped on the grounds of the Tri-State Crematory in Noble, Georgia. They will receive $36 million from a group of funeral homes in Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee, according to a news release from Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein.

The funeral homes had sent the bodies to the crematory, about 100 miles northwest of Atlanta.

Georgia Farm Bureau, which had provided an insurance policy to Ray and Clara Marsh, the owners of the crematory, has agreed to pay $3.5 million to the plaintiffs. Crematory land also will be sold and the proceeds given to the relatives.

Ray Brent Marsh, who operated Tri-State on behalf of his parents, was arrested and charged with theft by deception in February, 2002 after 334 bodies were found in the woods and in storage sheds on the crematory property.

Investigators suspect that Tri-State, which had been in business for about 30 years, was forgoing cremations and passing off wood chips and other substances, including powdered cement, as human ashes to the families of the deceased.

Marsh's trial is expected to begin later this year. If convicted, he could be sentenced to between one and 15 years in prison for each of the hundreds of counts of theft he faces.