Man arrested after bodies found near crematory

Investigators remove bodies found behind the crematory Saturday.

NOBLE, Georgia (CNN) -- Authorities arrested a Georgia man Saturday after discovering about 80 unburied and un-cremated bodies and body parts in sheds and strewn on the grounds of a crematory northwest of Atlanta.

Ray Brent Marsh, 28, the son of the crematory's owners, told authorities the incinerator had not worked for some time, said John Bankhead, a spokesman for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

Marsh was arrested Saturday and charged with theft by deception. He was at the Walker County Jail.

Marsh's mother and father lived on the grounds of the Tri-State Crematory but may not have known about the bodies, Bankhead said. Marsh has run the business since taking over from his father, who is bedridden, in the mid-1990s.

Thirteen of the bodies had been identified as of Saturday evening, Bankhead said.

"There were bodies that were just brought in within the past couple of days," he said. "Others appear to have been there less than a month, others for some time. Skeletal remains were found as well."

Authorities found caskets containing bodies that had been buried and then dug up, leaving investigators "scratching our heads as to why," said Bankhead.

A resident called the Environmental Protection Agency's Atlanta office Friday about the dumped remains. Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes declared a state of emergency for Walker County, about 85 miles northwest of Atlanta near the Tennessee and Alabama borders.

The crematory is set on 16 acres of land that includes a large lake and is surrounded by a residential neighborhood. The crematory was built before the county passed zoning laws, said Lisa Ray, a spokesman for the Georgia Emergency Management Agency.

"You walk back there and see a box lying on a pile of junk -- a deceased individual laid out in a burial suit, a blue suit, obviously embalmed in the box he was supposed to be cremated in -- decomposed," said Bankhead, who surveyed the scene Saturday.

Many of the bodies had been placed inside two sheds, but some were abandoned on the ground outside. Some of the remains were just body parts, he said.

Ray Brent Marsh, son of the crematory's owners, faces charges of theft by deception.

"A skull to your right, a leg bone to your left, a rib cage not too many feet away," Bankhead said.

Authorities quickly identified some of the bodies thanks to a 1994 law requiring bodies be identified prior to burial or cremation.

Legislators passed the law after floods in southern Georgia caused dozens of caskets to rise from cemeteries and float away, Ray said.

Ray predicted many more bodies would be found when authorities excavate the land and search the lake.

"There's more that they can see, and they haven't even started excavations," Ray said. "The medical examiner said it could take weeks."

Area funeral directors have been enlisted to help identify the bodies. But it is unlikely all the bodies and body parts will be identified, she said. Some of them had no identification, indicating they died before the 1994 law.

The smell of death does not cover the area, Ray said. Many of the bodies had been shipped from nearby Tennessee and Alabama. By law, bodies transported across state lines must be embalmed, which cuts the smell.

Counselors have also been called in to help family members, few of whom had ever heard of the crematory.

"We are telling the families that had relatives cremated to call the funeral homes and ask them, 'Were their relatives sent to the place?'" Bankhead said.

One woman said she believed the urn she had been told contained the ashes of her dead mother probably contained concrete.