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Body Bags: The Tri-State Crematory · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:08
Speaker 1: Body Backs with Joseph Scott Morgan. There's something about wintertime
0:20
Speaker 1: in the Deep South. It can be cool outside, but
0:25
Speaker 1: still the sun warns your face. I'm February the fifteenth,
0:29
Speaker 1: two thousand and two. Lady was out walking her dog
0:33
Speaker 1: along country lane in rural Georgia, one of those places
0:38
Speaker 1: that's got pine trees on either side of the road,
0:41
Speaker 1: beautiful cobalt blue skies above her. Not a care in
0:45
Speaker 1: the world. Now, She's walking along with her dog and
0:49
Speaker 1: enjoying the perfect day. She looks over to her right
0:53
Speaker 1: and she notices something glinting in the sun. It's a
0:57
Speaker 1: human skull, bleached white. Lord only knows how long it
1:01
Speaker 1: had been there. That discovery by that woman led to
1:04
Speaker 1: one of the most horrific events in the history of
1:08
Speaker 1: the state of Georgia. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
1:14
Speaker 1: is Bodybacks with me today is my good friend Jackie Howard,
1:18
Speaker 1: executive producer of Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Jackie, have
1:24
Speaker 1: you ever heard about anything like this in your entire life?
1:27
Speaker 1: And I'm talking about the Tri State Crematory. No, Joe,
1:30
Speaker 1: I have not. It has been, as you said, twenty
1:33
Speaker 1: years since this gruesome discovery was made in February of
1:37
Speaker 1: two thousand and two. Nearly three hundred and fifty decomposing
1:41
Speaker 1: bodies were found on the property of a crematorium in Noble,
1:46
Speaker 1: Georgia that is up in the mountains of North Georgia,
1:49
Speaker 1: up above Rome. It's a very small town and the
1:52
Speaker 1: Tri State Crematorium had been in business since the early
1:56
Speaker 1: seventies and it served a number of funeral homes in Georgia,
2:00
Speaker 1: Alabama in Tennessee. What was found was instead of performing
2:05
Speaker 1: services that he was hired to do, the owner, Ray
2:09
Speaker 1: Brent Marsh, would not perform the cremation services, but rather
2:14
Speaker 1: he just stacked bodies and stored the bodies there on
2:18
Speaker 1: the property. Families were given concrete in the urns they requested,
2:24
Speaker 1: They did not receive the remains of their family and
2:28
Speaker 1: loved ones. And I have so many questions for you, Joe,
2:31
Speaker 1: but what I want to start off with is talking
2:34
Speaker 1: about cremation. Most people really don't understand it other than
2:38
Speaker 1: to know that bodies are burned. So what is cremation
2:43
Speaker 1: and how are bodies prepared to be cremated? Yeah, Jackie,
2:47
Speaker 1: you know the public at large as no interest in it. Well,
2:51
Speaker 1: let me rephrase that the public at large doesn't want
2:56
Speaker 1: to know anything about it because it's absolutely gruesome when
2:59
Speaker 1: you begin to talk about it, you know, you think
3:01
Speaker 1: about the total and complete development of a human remain
3:05
Speaker 1: to get it rendered down into ash all that's left behind.
3:11
Speaker 1: And you know, you take a body and after it's
3:14
Speaker 1: been rendered down, you can put it into an urn.
3:17
Speaker 1: And many people have them in their homes. But how
3:20
Speaker 1: do you get to that point? And let me dispel
3:23
Speaker 1: one thing right up front. Not every funeral home has
3:28
Speaker 1: a crematory. This is a very specific operation. As a
3:32
Speaker 1: matter of fact, you have to meet very stringent EPA
3:35
Speaker 1: standards in order to operate one owned and operate one.
3:39
Speaker 1: And so what happens in the funeral industry is that
3:43
Speaker 1: you will have a regular funeral home and they will
3:45
Speaker 1: essentially subcontract with a crematory that will perform this function. Now,
3:51
Speaker 1: once these bodies are received at the crematory, they're prepared
3:56
Speaker 1: simply by placing the body on essentially a conveyor belt,
4:02
Speaker 1: and they're conveyed into this giant crematory, which you know,
4:07
Speaker 1: for lack of a better term, it's a huge oven,
4:09
Speaker 1: is essentially what it is now what makes it so
4:13
Speaker 1: effective is that it is completely sealed, all right. And
4:18
Speaker 1: when it's sealed within this environment, there are these little
4:22
Speaker 1: gas jets that are positioned all around the interior of
4:27
Speaker 1: this thing. And what happens is it's supplied by natural
4:32
Speaker 1: gas like a gas line that's running into the crematory.
4:36
Speaker 1: This thing is initiated and it has to remain sustained
4:42
Speaker 1: at a temperature of about seventeen to eighteen hundred degrees
4:46
Speaker 1: spahreheit for a protracted period of time. Now understand that
4:52
Speaker 1: the length of time that a cremation takes is many
4:57
Speaker 1: times totally and completely dependent upon the size of the body.
5:02
Speaker 1: Let's just be very frankier. If you've got a very
5:04
Speaker 1: small person, it's not going to take as long as
5:06
Speaker 1: it would be for somebody that is, say, very very large.
5:11
Speaker 1: So there is some skill involved in this. Now, once
5:14
Speaker 1: the body is essentially rendered down in the crematory, it
5:19
Speaker 1: is belt fed out out of the oven itself and
5:24
Speaker 1: it goes through an auger. If you will just imagine
5:28
Speaker 1: a great turning screw and this will make What it
5:34
Speaker 1: does is it actually reduces the larger burned pieces down
5:41
Speaker 1: to a particulate particulate remain, which is powdered almost And
5:49
Speaker 1: you know, because you have to understand that, for instance,
5:52
Speaker 1: when you're talking about bone, bone is not resilient as
5:56
Speaker 1: resilient as teeth. For instance, teeth are not bone. Teeth
6:00
Speaker 1: will survive a cremation many times. So the idea is
6:03
Speaker 1: to try to render it down as far as you
6:05
Speaker 1: possibly can. And to the untrained eye, most people would
6:09
Speaker 1: not be able to be able to discern between say,
6:16
Speaker 1: something that they're told is a cremaine, and that's the
6:20
Speaker 1: term that's actually used like remains if a body has
6:23
Speaker 1: been cremated, they're referred to as cremines. That and concrete dust,
6:29
Speaker 1: which in the case of Raybrant Marsh, he was actually
6:33
Speaker 1: taking concrete dust and filling earns with them and giving
6:38
Speaker 1: us back to families. Now, you know, in addition to that,
6:43
Speaker 1: it is stated that he would burn wood periodically to
6:47
Speaker 1: kind of render it down as well, to give it
6:49
Speaker 1: kind of a charret appearance, and he would commingle mix
6:53
Speaker 1: that with this concrete dust, seal it up and hand
6:58
Speaker 1: it back to the family and say here the cremains
7:01
Speaker 1: of your loved one. So after the body is rendered down,
7:03
Speaker 1: Joe is everything including the bones and teeth decimated. Yeah, yeah,
7:08
Speaker 1: it is, Jackie, and that's one of the reasons that
7:11
Speaker 1: that it will go through this auguring process. There will
7:15
Speaker 1: be larger pieces that still remain, but they're very fragile.
7:19
Speaker 1: So the auger after it's you know, after these cremains
7:22
Speaker 1: have passed through the oven, will go through the auger
7:25
Speaker 1: process and it will render them down even further to
7:28
Speaker 1: the point where they're powder, all right, and we're talking
7:31
Speaker 1: about things like moane, we're talking about things like teeth.
7:35
Speaker 1: So that enables the operator to actually take this dust,
7:41
Speaker 1: if you will, and it is dust. It's very very
7:43
Speaker 1: fine for folks at home that don't know or have
7:47
Speaker 1: a hard time conceptualizing this literally if you will, the
7:52
Speaker 1: next time you're around baby powder, talcum powder, just take
7:55
Speaker 1: some of that and render it out into your hand.
7:58
Speaker 1: And crim means are generally just a tad bitten more
8:03
Speaker 1: course than talcum powder. So yeah, it reduces it all
8:06
Speaker 1: the way down. Is it white or gray white? Like
8:09
Speaker 1: we think of having, you know, ash from your fireplace,
8:12
Speaker 1: Generally it's going to have some level of carbon in it,
8:15
Speaker 1: so it will have it'll be more gray, if you will,
8:19
Speaker 1: and sometimes you can pick up on kind of darker
8:23
Speaker 1: elements that will appear black, but there it's very particulate.
8:26
Speaker 1: The fire burns at such a high rate and for
8:29
Speaker 1: such a sustained period of time that most of the
8:32
Speaker 1: time the elements that are left behind are going to
8:35
Speaker 1: have kind of a gray appearance. It's not gonna be
8:37
Speaker 1: white like talc or like snow. It will have kind
8:40
Speaker 1: of a gray appearance to them. So let's just say
8:42
Speaker 1: an average body six feet, I don't know, two hundred pounds.
8:49
Speaker 1: How long is that going to take? I mean, are
8:50
Speaker 1: we talking about days and days? I know you talked
8:52
Speaker 1: about it's obviously going to be different with a child
8:55
Speaker 1: as far as an adult, but just in general about
8:58
Speaker 1: how long does it take our person Because we have
9:01
Speaker 1: so many bodies here that we're not cremated. I'm just
9:05
Speaker 1: trying to get an idea of if they had been,
9:08
Speaker 1: how much time would that have taken. Well, you can
9:11
Speaker 1: probably account. You know, you have to think about prep.
9:13
Speaker 1: You know, what has to go into this taking the
9:16
Speaker 1: body down to the bare essence. Some of these bodies
9:19
Speaker 1: will in fact have been autopsy perhaps and you may
9:22
Speaker 1: have had and people don't realize this. You may have
9:24
Speaker 1: had bodies that had previously been embombed while in order
9:28
Speaker 1: to preserve them. So you know, while families begin to
9:30
Speaker 1: try to think, you know, lots of times families can't
9:33
Speaker 1: make like a snap decision at the time of death.
9:35
Speaker 1: So sometimes bodies funeral homes will go ahead in bomb bodies,
9:39
Speaker 1: and then the families will say, you know what, I
9:41
Speaker 1: think that we're going to go ahead and go down
9:43
Speaker 1: the cremation route. So with that said, every case it
9:46
Speaker 1: is going to be variable. You begin to think about
9:48
Speaker 1: bone density again, you know, tissue thickness, all these sorts
9:52
Speaker 1: of things. But on average it's going to take you
9:54
Speaker 1: roughly one to two hours in order to render body
9:57
Speaker 1: completely down. Okay, what about metal in your body? Fillings, implants,
10:05
Speaker 1: screws from accidents that have been repaired, you know, break
10:08
Speaker 1: your leg, you get a screw through, right, Yeah about
10:11
Speaker 1: metals like that, Yeah, and you'll you'll still have things
10:14
Speaker 1: like pins that are put in from surgery. You know,
10:16
Speaker 1: some of these things are stainless steel, and they'll still
10:18
Speaker 1: be a remnant of that. Many times the operators will
10:21
Speaker 1: go through and they will pick out these items. And
10:23
Speaker 1: one of the things that actually is very interesting about
10:26
Speaker 1: this case, you know, aside from how horrific it is,
10:30
Speaker 1: is that it has been stated by Ray Brent Marsh's
10:34
Speaker 1: attorney on a couple of occasions that he and his father,
10:38
Speaker 1: who had previously operated this facility to try state crematory,
10:44
Speaker 1: they had been exposed to fillings in teeth as they
10:48
Speaker 1: were being burned down. These filings contained mercury. And so
10:52
Speaker 1: what can happen with the exposure to mercury is that
10:58
Speaker 1: you will have instant of this toxic effect on the
11:02
Speaker 1: brain and your ability to perceive things in judgment, and
11:05
Speaker 1: all these sorts of things come into play. And you know,
11:09
Speaker 1: the attorney has said on a couple of occasions that
11:11
Speaker 1: there were unhealthy levels of this substance and Ray Brinton
11:16
Speaker 1: Marsh's blood work over a period of time. But you
11:20
Speaker 1: know that that rationale, that reasoning was not something that
11:24
Speaker 1: was considered by the coordinates case at the risk of
11:26
Speaker 1: being morbid more morbid than usual. Joe, what about this smell?
11:31
Speaker 1: Is there a smell or is it burning at such
11:34
Speaker 1: a high temperature that it burns that smell off. I mean,
11:37
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to think of people who work in
11:39
Speaker 1: the facility, what are they going to be exposed to. Yeah, well,
11:42
Speaker 1: the first thing you're going to be exposed to is
11:44
Speaker 1: the intense heat in this environment. And you know, I've
11:48
Speaker 1: been in several crematories over the course of my career,
11:52
Speaker 1: and there's not necessarily an adverse smell when you when
11:57
Speaker 1: you walk in or anything like that because it's so contained,
12:00
Speaker 1: but you can I think probably for me, even me
12:04
Speaker 1: as a death investigator spent around thousands and thousands of
12:07
Speaker 1: dead bodies, there was something ominous to me when I
12:11
Speaker 1: would go in here. I remember one of the last
12:14
Speaker 1: times I ever went into a crematory, the oven had
12:18
Speaker 1: been off for probably three hours when I arrived, and
12:24
Speaker 1: I was going there to examine a body that was
12:26
Speaker 1: to be cremated, and Zachie, I got to tell you,
12:30
Speaker 1: the radiating heat from the oven itself absolutely just struck
12:35
Speaker 1: me in the face. It's one of those moments in
12:37
Speaker 1: time where you know, we talk about being struck backwards
12:41
Speaker 1: by smell. We have something that's that's offensive that we smell,
12:44
Speaker 1: and that of course has happened to me many times
12:46
Speaker 1: on cases involving severe decomposed bodies. But there was something
12:50
Speaker 1: about this environment when you go in there that residual heat.
12:54
Speaker 1: You can feel it and it just kind of gets
12:56
Speaker 1: all over you. And it did for me. You know,
12:58
Speaker 1: it impacted me and I never could get past that
13:01
Speaker 1: because you know, I didn't go to crematories like weekly
13:04
Speaker 1: or anything like that, but I did visit them from
13:06
Speaker 1: time to time. The heat is what always got to me,
13:09
Speaker 1: because you know, I knew what was I knew about
13:12
Speaker 1: the process. I knew what was going on, and so
13:14
Speaker 1: you're in this environment and this radiating heat is kind
13:16
Speaker 1: of getting all over you at that moment time and
13:19
Speaker 1: you know, at least in your mind you're connecting, you're
13:22
Speaker 1: connecting these events together. You know what has just transpired there.
13:26
Speaker 1: So you know, in the case of tries to crematory,
13:31
Speaker 1: it was essentially a single person operation. I think that
13:34
Speaker 1: Ray Brinton Marsh's mother helped administrate the facility, but he
13:40
Speaker 1: was the one that was solely responsible. By this time,
13:43
Speaker 1: his father, who was elderly, was already bedridden in sickness,
13:48
Speaker 1: so Marsh was operating this by himself. He would take
13:52
Speaker 1: these bodies from the funeral home and the way it
13:55
Speaker 1: would happen is that he had contracted or had contracts
13:59
Speaker 1: with these funeral home that would say, hey, mister marsh
14:01
Speaker 1: we need to bring a body down to you and
14:03
Speaker 1: have it cremated. We need it back at this prescribed
14:06
Speaker 1: time the family is expecting range. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no problem.
14:10
Speaker 1: He would go retrieve it from maybe a funeral home
14:12
Speaker 1: or a hospital, take it to his crematory, and of
14:16
Speaker 1: course he would feign having cremated the body. The next thing,
14:21
Speaker 1: you know, he's got an urn that he returns to
14:24
Speaker 1: the funeral home. He doesn't give it directly to the family,
14:26
Speaker 1: gives it to the funeral home. So now you've involved
14:28
Speaker 1: these funeral homes in this process where the funeral home,
14:32
Speaker 1: unbeknownst to them, they're receiving these cremains and then they're
14:36
Speaker 1: handing them off to the family, you know, and of
14:39
Speaker 1: course accepting the money for the process. And this would
14:43
Speaker 1: happen time and time again. Jackie. There's some indication that
14:47
Speaker 1: these cases that we're talking about, and I don't know
14:50
Speaker 1: that they've ever found all of the bodies, there's some
14:53
Speaker 1: indication that this may have been going on since hold
14:57
Speaker 1: onto your hat here, since the mid nineties, per apps,
15:00
Speaker 1: that these bodies have been accumulating since that period of time.
15:04
Speaker 1: And one fact that we have to consider, Joe, that
15:07
Speaker 1: these families forgive and concrete dust. Most people are so
15:13
Speaker 1: unfamiliar with what they should be receiving from the funeral
15:17
Speaker 1: home that if they look in the urn, they're really
15:20
Speaker 1: not going to know the difference. No, they're they're not.
15:23
Speaker 1: That's not, that's not that's not even on somebody's rate.
15:25
Speaker 1: I mean, who goes into a funeral home and actually
15:30
Speaker 1: thinks that they're having a wool pulled over their eyes
15:33
Speaker 1: when it comes to the remains of the loved one?
15:37
Speaker 1: I mean, just try to do the math on that,
15:40
Speaker 1: just for a second, to hear and sound of my voice.
15:41
Speaker 1: You know, who who among us would actually think that
15:45
Speaker 1: you're being deceived by somebody that is being entrusted, arguably
15:52
Speaker 1: with one of the most sacred, if you will, precious
15:59
Speaker 1: things that we have, and that's our loved ones, the
16:01
Speaker 1: remains of our loved ones. You know that we for
16:05
Speaker 1: for eons, you know, we we've you know, as humans,
16:08
Speaker 1: we've practiced honoring the dead. I think it just let's
16:12
Speaker 1: just absorb that, just for a second, honoring the dead.
16:15
Speaker 1: You know that the dead are essentially the most defenseless
16:19
Speaker 1: among us, if you will, uh, the dead having a voice.
16:23
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you this too. You know, over the
16:25
Speaker 1: course of my career, I made in excess probably of
16:27
Speaker 1: two thousand in person death notifications. And one of the
16:31
Speaker 1: things that really has resonated with me over the years
16:35
Speaker 1: is that you know, people that have illness, you know sicknesses,
16:40
Speaker 1: they go through divorces, um, they have bad marriages, all
16:44
Speaker 1: these sorts of things. It's it's really hard to take
16:47
Speaker 1: the measure of anybody that's going through grief, how vulnerable
16:52
Speaker 1: you are. You're You're like, you're like a weak little child,
16:57
Speaker 1: uh that that needs care. And I'm talking about the
17:00
Speaker 1: families that remain these people, these grieving families are literally
17:06
Speaker 1: the most vulnerable people at that moment time in our society.
17:10
Speaker 1: These grieving families are probably the easiest to be preyed upon.
17:33
Speaker 1: I remember sitting at my desk. I was still working
17:35
Speaker 1: for the Medical Examiner's Office in Atlanta as a senior investigator,
17:40
Speaker 1: and I remember sitting at my desk when the news
17:42
Speaker 1: broke about this case. And at that point in time,
17:46
Speaker 1: when the news broke about tri State Crematory, we knew
17:51
Speaker 1: that there were a lot of bodies up in that
17:54
Speaker 1: area of Georgia that they had discovered. But I don't
17:56
Speaker 1: think that that at that moment time that I could
18:00
Speaker 1: even take the measure of it in my mind, because
18:03
Speaker 1: this had never happened before. It had literally never happened.
18:06
Speaker 1: I don't know of any agency that it had ever
18:08
Speaker 1: been faced with a set of circumstances like this. You know,
18:12
Speaker 1: what do you do with three hundred plus bodies that
18:15
Speaker 1: are suddenly thrust upon you in this tiny, tiny little county.
18:20
Speaker 1: You just made a major point show and you probably
18:22
Speaker 1: didn't even catch it yourself right then, you said three
18:25
Speaker 1: hundred plus of bodies. We should note that in total,
18:28
Speaker 1: three hundred thirty four bodies were recovered. The bodies were
18:32
Speaker 1: being stored and piled in a storage shed, in vaults,
18:38
Speaker 1: and scattered inside and outside of the property. Three hundred
18:41
Speaker 1: and thirty four bodies were recovered. How many weren't. That's
18:45
Speaker 1: a big question, isn't, Jackie. You know, because when you're
18:48
Speaker 1: talking about essentially, and I mean this in the truest
18:52
Speaker 1: sense of the word, you know, you hear the term
18:54
Speaker 1: disintegration and people don't really give it much thought. But
19:00
Speaker 1: a cremation probably comes closer to disintegration more so than
19:06
Speaker 1: anything else. When we begin to think about human bodies,
19:08
Speaker 1: you're literally disintegrating the body. You're pulling it apart. It's
19:12
Speaker 1: coming apart at a molecular level, so that nothing is
19:16
Speaker 1: left to imagine this. If a strong wind came by,
19:20
Speaker 1: it could blow cremains away. That gives you an idea.
19:22
Speaker 1: So how much more so when we begin to consider
19:26
Speaker 1: you know, you had mentioned how many had been found
19:28
Speaker 1: at that moment time, and reflect back to what I
19:31
Speaker 1: had said, there was some indication this may have been
19:33
Speaker 1: going on since the mid ninety I don't know how
19:35
Speaker 1: many cases he was doing every single year, but you
19:39
Speaker 1: begin to do the math on this, and the numbers
19:42
Speaker 1: could potentially be astronomical. There may very well still be
19:45
Speaker 1: family members out there that have never given this a
19:49
Speaker 1: second thought. They didn't even know that they were attached
19:53
Speaker 1: in this way to this man's business. They may have
19:58
Speaker 1: that urned sitting up on the mantelpiece or in a
20:02
Speaker 1: m an honored spot in their home, on a shelf somewhere,
20:07
Speaker 1: you know, where every day they walk by and they
20:09
Speaker 1: just they just assume that their loved one's body is
20:13
Speaker 1: in there. So, you know, when you begin to think
20:16
Speaker 1: about what happens to these bodies. You know, these bodies
20:18
Speaker 1: were actually laying out. Not all of them were in vaults,
20:22
Speaker 1: which we can get into, but many of these bodies
20:25
Speaker 1: were actually laying out on the bare ground, on bare earth,
20:31
Speaker 1: and not just not just individually singularly. There are some
20:36
Speaker 1: reports that these bodies were stacked, and I heard one
20:40
Speaker 1: description where an individual said, just you know, bear with
20:43
Speaker 1: me here and try to wrap your mind around this
20:46
Speaker 1: stacked like cordwood. That is when somebody says that that's
20:51
Speaker 1: like you, you're, you know, the firewood that you've cut
20:54
Speaker 1: for the next year to go in, you know, to
20:57
Speaker 1: burn over the year. That these bodies are stacked like cordwood,
21:00
Speaker 1: just laying about, and they're everywhere. They're absolutely everywhere over
21:04
Speaker 1: this huge piece of property that's kind of got a
21:06
Speaker 1: wooden barrier to it, if you will, where you couldn't
21:09
Speaker 1: really see beyond the woods. It just happened that this
21:13
Speaker 1: lady was walking down the road with her dog and
21:18
Speaker 1: she happened to see the skull. Now, there had allegedly
21:21
Speaker 1: been whispers in the air for years and years that
21:24
Speaker 1: something was not quite right, that there were things going
21:27
Speaker 1: on around there, but no one had ever taken the
21:29
Speaker 1: time to go out and look, and it actually took
21:31
Speaker 1: a private citizen walking down the road to find the skull.
21:34
Speaker 1: And you asked this question, I think, how did the
21:37
Speaker 1: skull wind up in view that close to the road. Well,
21:42
Speaker 1: my default position on this is the following. It's the
21:46
Speaker 1: fact that they're scavengers coming onto that property. Jackie. You've
21:50
Speaker 1: got wild dogs, you've got coyotes, you've got any other
21:54
Speaker 1: kind of animals that will take remains and to them
21:57
Speaker 1: their food, and they will drag remains all over. So
22:00
Speaker 1: that's why I'm saying that logistically, it's a nightmare if
22:04
Speaker 1: you're out there trying to recover the remains and you're
22:06
Speaker 1: trying to account for everything that's out there. Lord only
22:11
Speaker 1: knows how many bodies have been drug off over the years.
22:14
Speaker 1: I bet probably folks in that area could still go
22:17
Speaker 1: out there and it would not surprise me in the
22:18
Speaker 1: least bit in the adjacent wooded area that human remains
22:22
Speaker 1: would still be found to this day. So in a
22:25
Speaker 1: shit and scattered in and outside of the property, and
22:28
Speaker 1: in the vaults, we know that bodies decay. Number one,
22:32
Speaker 1: would they have decayed inside the vault just as normal
22:35
Speaker 1: or are they sealed since they're in a vacuum. Would
22:38
Speaker 1: that have made a difference? And what would the scene
22:41
Speaker 1: have looked like with all of these bodies. It's very basic.
22:46
Speaker 1: You know, you're gonna have flies, you're gonna have maggots,
22:49
Speaker 1: you're gonna have a smell. I mean, and you're talking
22:51
Speaker 1: about a number of bodies that really it would have
22:54
Speaker 1: been hard to miss these kind of decompositional markers. Yeah,
22:59
Speaker 1: I think. So, you know, you begin to think about that,
23:02
Speaker 1: and the only thing I can really kind of hang
23:05
Speaker 1: my hat on here scientifically is that there would be
23:08
Speaker 1: a foul odor. But an average citizen that was going
23:11
Speaker 1: down the road might catch a whiff of that smell
23:13
Speaker 1: and they say, oh, well, I know where I am.
23:16
Speaker 1: I'm by the crematory. That's probably normal. I gotta tell
23:20
Speaker 1: you it ain't normal, all right, And yeah, the smell
23:24
Speaker 1: would have been affecting to a great degree. You go
23:28
Speaker 1: in and you have these bodies that are and you know,
23:31
Speaker 1: you'd mentioned the vaults, and if folks aren't familiar with
23:34
Speaker 1: what my vault flat, some people will say crips. Some
23:37
Speaker 1: people will say vault. If you're ever going down the
23:39
Speaker 1: highway and you see a flatbed truck going down the road,
23:42
Speaker 1: it'll have these big concrete boxes on it many times,
23:45
Speaker 1: and you'll see this lid that's fitted on, that's fit
23:47
Speaker 1: on top. Those are actually the vaults that are dropped
23:50
Speaker 1: into the ground at a dug grave. And remember coffins
23:53
Speaker 1: are not just simply you know, you just don't dig
23:56
Speaker 1: a hole and stick the coffin in the ground. They
23:58
Speaker 1: put a concrete vault in the ground and then lower
24:01
Speaker 1: the casket into the vault, and then a lid is
24:04
Speaker 1: placed on the ball. Now, this is not vacuum sealed
24:07
Speaker 1: in any way. In Ray Brinton Marsh's case, he had
24:12
Speaker 1: several of these vaults that were around the property. I
24:15
Speaker 1: think they found four that I know of that. And
24:19
Speaker 1: these things are big, I mean, they're they're you know,
24:22
Speaker 1: from a three dimensional standpoint. You know, you look at
24:25
Speaker 1: one of these things that's probably i don't know, probably
24:27
Speaker 1: four feet wide, it's over six feet in length, and
24:31
Speaker 1: it's probably i don't know, maybe four feet deep. You
24:36
Speaker 1: take this thing and you can just kind of compress
24:38
Speaker 1: bodies into this thing, and it works much like you
24:43
Speaker 1: might think of mulching in your yard. You know, people
24:47
Speaker 1: mulch decaying vegetual matter. You begin to stack these bodies
24:51
Speaker 1: on top of one another and there and there's heat.
24:54
Speaker 1: Remember we're talking about the Deep South, and it didn't
24:57
Speaker 1: have to be to the Deep South. You could have
24:58
Speaker 1: done this up north as well. It's gets hot up
25:00
Speaker 1: there too, and then you put the lid on top
25:03
Speaker 1: of it. That increases kind of the level of heat
25:07
Speaker 1: that's contained in there because you've got you've got this
25:11
Speaker 1: process that's going on in decomposition where it's kind of
25:14
Speaker 1: generating its own heat and it impacts everything else around it.
25:19
Speaker 1: So at the end of the day, when you take
25:21
Speaker 1: the lids off of these vaults, and this is quite
25:25
Speaker 1: amazing when you think of it. You take the lids
25:28
Speaker 1: off these vaults, the body's on top that we're last
25:32
Speaker 1: laying in there. You might get still recognize that that's
25:35
Speaker 1: a body, but as you go deeper. As you go deeper,
25:40
Speaker 1: now you're getting into essentially what becomes a stew. It's
25:45
Speaker 1: actually a stew. This is almost like a slow cooking
25:49
Speaker 1: process where everything is beginning to render down and drop
25:53
Speaker 1: down and drop down. We have a term for this
25:55
Speaker 1: in forensic anthropology that these practitioner referred to and it's
26:01
Speaker 1: called stratification, where you know, when remains are buried, and
26:06
Speaker 1: you know, from a geological standpoint, you can see stratification
26:09
Speaker 1: where things are laid on top of things and things
26:12
Speaker 1: become stratified. There's different layers to them, and here you've
26:15
Speaker 1: got an intense example of that. Now, what happens is
26:19
Speaker 1: that as a result of these bodies being stratified, they
26:22
Speaker 1: begin to come apart. And as they come apart, remember
26:26
Speaker 1: we don't have any soft tissue in place any longer
26:29
Speaker 1: that are holding that's holding skeleton together. Now you've just
26:32
Speaker 1: got this kind of really disgusting soup that's at the bottom,
26:37
Speaker 1: and the remains begin to commingle. So you'll have skeletal
26:41
Speaker 1: remains that over period of time. You can't really appreciate
26:46
Speaker 1: it in the short period, but over period of time
26:49
Speaker 1: they actually begin to roll a little bit in there,
26:51
Speaker 1: they'll they'll adjust, particularly in this kind of thick, viscous
26:56
Speaker 1: fluid that's down at the bottom, and you have this
26:59
Speaker 1: commingling of remains, So you have all of these skeletons
27:02
Speaker 1: that are mixed together. So when you look at it,
27:05
Speaker 1: you can just you know, just from that, you know
27:07
Speaker 1: the human body's got over two hundred bones in it.
27:10
Speaker 1: So if you've got fifteen bodies that are stacked on
27:13
Speaker 1: top of, you know, one another, and there do the math?
27:16
Speaker 1: Do the math get an idea as to what you're
27:18
Speaker 1: talking about relative to all of the skeletal elements that
27:24
Speaker 1: are commingling one one another. How do you go about
27:27
Speaker 1: kind of separating all of this. That's what made this
27:30
Speaker 1: such an overwhelming task. Where all of the people at
27:33
Speaker 1: the scene, Joe, we know that it was an anonymous
27:35
Speaker 1: tip that brought police into this investigation. How would they
27:40
Speaker 1: have linked that skull back to the crematory. The only
27:43
Speaker 1: answer I really have for that, Jackie, is proximity. You know,
27:48
Speaker 1: you put you put two and two together, because you
27:51
Speaker 1: know the authorities, the people that lived in this area
27:53
Speaker 1: and this little isolated rural area of Georgia. People know
27:59
Speaker 1: that travel up down that road, that live in proximity
28:02
Speaker 1: to this location. Certainly the authorities, I'm sure, probably know
28:05
Speaker 1: that the crematory is there. So you find a skull
28:09
Speaker 1: lying on the ground and you're going to put these
28:11
Speaker 1: two factors together. You don't have to be an investigator
28:14
Speaker 1: to do that. Your point of origin is going to
28:16
Speaker 1: be within a stone strow of that skull. And then
28:19
Speaker 1: when you get investigators out there, they're going to know
28:22
Speaker 1: or at least have a rudimentary understanding regarding human remains
28:27
Speaker 1: and how far safe. For instance, a scavenger will go
28:31
Speaker 1: with a bit of human remain. You know, they're not
28:34
Speaker 1: going to go a long, long ways away. So if
28:37
Speaker 1: you think about that skull, the remainder of that body
28:39
Speaker 1: probably would be within fifty yards of that point at
28:44
Speaker 1: which you found the skull, unless unless there had been
28:47
Speaker 1: some kind of huge rain storm and the body had
28:50
Speaker 1: been completely disarticulated and things get washed away. But that's
28:54
Speaker 1: that's an anomaly that normally doesn't happen. And in this
28:59
Speaker 1: particular case, when they found that skull, all they had
29:01
Speaker 1: to do is think, well, my gosh, you know, just
29:04
Speaker 1: through that woodline is a crematory. I think that we
29:06
Speaker 1: can probably begin our investigation there. And I'm sure that
29:09
Speaker 1: when they rolled up they began to ask questions and
29:11
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, can you imagine being that investigator.
29:14
Speaker 1: You look out and maybe you see a foot, maybe
29:17
Speaker 1: you see a hand, maybe you see an entire intact body,
29:20
Speaker 1: and suddenly you realize what you're in the middle of
29:22
Speaker 1: and it was an absolute hellscape. So far, Joe, two
29:25
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty six of the three hundred and thirty
29:28
Speaker 1: four bodies that were recovered have been identified, So at
29:31
Speaker 1: this point you're looking at DNA. They obviously would go
29:35
Speaker 1: to their families and say we found this body part.
29:39
Speaker 1: Did you contract with the crematory for services? Is that
29:43
Speaker 1: how it was working to identify those bodies? Yeah. The GBI,
29:48
Speaker 1: which the GBI is the primary investigative body within the
29:52
Speaker 1: state of Georder. They're the state police. You know, you've
29:55
Speaker 1: got the state troopers that handle highway things that go
29:58
Speaker 1: on like that, and then you have the GBI, the
30:00
Speaker 1: Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and they're the ones that took
30:05
Speaker 1: the lead on this case from this perspective of trying
30:09
Speaker 1: to peace solve this together. And of course at this
30:13
Speaker 1: point in time, this is what's kind of odd about
30:16
Speaker 1: this case and kind of sets it apart, you know,
30:17
Speaker 1: different than things that maybe I talk about regularly on
30:20
Speaker 1: body bags, this case, when you begin to bore down
30:25
Speaker 1: into it, you're not talking about a homicide. Now some
30:27
Speaker 1: of these bodies, I don't know, some of these people
30:30
Speaker 1: could have been victims of homicide. At some point in time,
30:32
Speaker 1: but they wound up with a funeral home. Okay, I'm
30:34
Speaker 1: not saying that that none of these bodies were the
30:36
Speaker 1: victim of a homicide before they got to the funeral home.
30:39
Speaker 1: That you know that that is probably a case. However,
30:43
Speaker 1: in this particular case, as it centers around Marsh and
30:47
Speaker 1: the Tristate Crematory, you're not talking about a true death investigation. Now.
30:53
Speaker 1: The mission here is to try to get the bodies identified.
30:56
Speaker 1: We're not we're not thinking about like we normally do
30:59
Speaker 1: in medical legal terms, causing manner of death, you know,
31:02
Speaker 1: which I talk a lot about on body backs. This
31:06
Speaker 1: is an identification effort at this point in time. So
31:10
Speaker 1: you're relying upon things like dental x rays if any
31:15
Speaker 1: of the bodies are visually identifiable. I'm sure that they
31:18
Speaker 1: took facial photographs of many of these bodies, some ones
31:21
Speaker 1: that could still be recognizable, any kind of jewelry that
31:25
Speaker 1: they may have had. And this is kind of a
31:27
Speaker 1: curious thing. I know that some of the bodies that
31:30
Speaker 1: and this is kind of this is really particularly ghastly.
31:35
Speaker 1: Some of these bodies that were out there were actually
31:37
Speaker 1: identified by hospital bracelets that they had on the wrist.
31:41
Speaker 1: And let me break this down to you. When somebody
31:45
Speaker 1: dies in a hospital, they still have their patient ID
31:49
Speaker 1: on their wrist. The body is removed from the room
31:53
Speaker 1: and it goes to perhaps the hospital morgue, or they
31:57
Speaker 1: might just if they don't have a morgue, they have
31:59
Speaker 1: what's called a cool room, and then you wait for
32:02
Speaker 1: the service to come and pick up the body. This
32:04
Speaker 1: is how little care this person took, all right. He
32:09
Speaker 1: would load the body into the back of the hearse,
32:12
Speaker 1: drive it to the crematory out on the property, and
32:16
Speaker 1: then can you imagine he just drags the body out
32:18
Speaker 1: of the back of the hearse and discards it out
32:20
Speaker 1: on the open ground, maybe still wearing. And I do
32:23
Speaker 1: know this for a fact. There were somebodies that were
32:25
Speaker 1: out there that still had hospital gowns on and they
32:28
Speaker 1: still had identity, those plastic identity bracelets around their wrist.
32:32
Speaker 1: I even know of a case where they found this
32:35
Speaker 1: is particularly horrible, found the body of an infant commingled
32:39
Speaker 1: with adult bodies. You imagine that just laying there and
32:44
Speaker 1: around the little ankle of the baby there was a
32:47
Speaker 1: hospital identifier. I've walked into homes where entire families have
33:11
Speaker 1: been slaughtered in one evening, and Yeah, I felt like
33:16
Speaker 1: I had the way of the world on me as
33:18
Speaker 1: an investigator because there were so there was so much
33:22
Speaker 1: evidence at the scene that I had to consider. I
33:25
Speaker 1: had to examine all of these bodies. I had to
33:27
Speaker 1: actually contextualize everything. I don't for me, I cannot even
33:33
Speaker 1: imagine what it would take in order to begin on
33:38
Speaker 1: a case like this when you look out over this
33:43
Speaker 1: piece of property and you cannot turn your head to
33:46
Speaker 1: the left of the right without seeing a corpse. Let's
33:49
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the people who would have
33:53
Speaker 1: handled this kind of assignment. What type of investigators were sent.
33:58
Speaker 1: I do know this was a federal investigation because it
34:01
Speaker 1: was across state lines, So what kind of personnel would
34:05
Speaker 1: have been deployed to handle this situation. Let's go back
34:10
Speaker 1: in time just a little bit, and remember we're talking
34:12
Speaker 1: about February two thousand and two. You know, in September
34:17
Speaker 1: of two thousand and one, just a couple of months
34:19
Speaker 1: before the Twin Towers had come down. As a matter
34:23
Speaker 1: of fact, at this point in time, in February two
34:25
Speaker 1: thousand and two, they still had not completely finished process
34:29
Speaker 1: in all of the bodies it would still be several
34:31
Speaker 1: months after that and up in New York when this occurred,
34:37
Speaker 1: it triggered an organization within the federal government that's called
34:42
Speaker 1: d morton. Many people have never heard of this organization,
34:46
Speaker 1: but it's it's kind of interesting, particularly from a medical
34:49
Speaker 1: legal standpoint, but d mort is an acronym that actually
34:52
Speaker 1: stands for a Disaster and Mortuary Operational Response Teams. And
34:56
Speaker 1: these teams are made up of medical legal death investigators,
35:03
Speaker 1: forensic pathologists, X ray technicians, mortuary service personnel, dentist from
35:09
Speaker 1: many people across the spectrum in medical legal death investigation.
35:12
Speaker 1: Their sole purpose is to go out in mass fatality
35:17
Speaker 1: events and begin to east together what had happened and
35:22
Speaker 1: try to identify bodies. You know, Jackie, some of the
35:26
Speaker 1: people that were out at the scene had just returned
35:31
Speaker 1: from Ground zero and can you imagine the horror that
35:35
Speaker 1: they had witnessed up there and then that come down
35:40
Speaker 1: to Georgia and before their very eyes here is something
35:44
Speaker 1: that is obviously not at the level of Ground zero,
35:47
Speaker 1: but still horrific to look at. So when the switch
35:53
Speaker 1: is flipped for these people to respond, it's only going
35:56
Speaker 1: to happen. And actually the state medical examiner requested assistance
36:01
Speaker 1: with this. It's only going to happen if you have
36:05
Speaker 1: such a volume of bodies that it outpaces the resources
36:10
Speaker 1: of the state. They don't have any way to handle this.
36:13
Speaker 1: So it would have been where these individuals would have
36:16
Speaker 1: gone out in teams. They were broken them down into teams.
36:19
Speaker 1: They would have searched a grid. They would have done
36:22
Speaker 1: a grid search over the entire area and begin to
36:24
Speaker 1: try to put this thing together so that they can
36:26
Speaker 1: come up with identifications for everybody. And it's at this
36:31
Speaker 1: point in time that you would have people like mortuary
36:35
Speaker 1: services people that would begin to coordinate with all of
36:38
Speaker 1: these contracted funeral homes around the area to try to
36:42
Speaker 1: track down how many bodies had been sent to try
36:48
Speaker 1: state crematory from the various funeral homes. Can you imagine
36:52
Speaker 1: what a nightmare would be, say, for instance, if a
36:54
Speaker 1: funeral home was now closed that may have been opened
36:56
Speaker 1: ten years earlier. The trail suddenly goes cold for you
37:01
Speaker 1: at that point in time, and you're left scratching their
37:05
Speaker 1: head because it's completely different than a normal investigation where
37:09
Speaker 1: we have an unidentified body. You know where the corners
37:12
Speaker 1: going out there? The medical examiner's going out there, and
37:14
Speaker 1: we're kind of the first on the scene at this
37:16
Speaker 1: point in time. The body, these bodies that you have
37:19
Speaker 1: before you have already passed through several hands at this point,
37:23
Speaker 1: so you're having to backtrack on everything. And then when
37:26
Speaker 1: you put this factor in there, this huge number of bodies,
37:31
Speaker 1: it increases exponentially as far as the amount of labor
37:35
Speaker 1: that it takes to try to solve these cases. How
37:38
Speaker 1: long would it take to complete an investigation like this
37:43
Speaker 1: with the number of bodies that were recovered and the
37:48
Speaker 1: size of the area that had to be investigated, It'd
37:52
Speaker 1: be daunting, to say the very least. A lot of
37:54
Speaker 1: it's going to be dependent upon what the level of
37:58
Speaker 1: decay is with a particular body, or how intact the
38:03
Speaker 1: body still is that you're you know, you have to
38:05
Speaker 1: focus on one body at a time, and so you know,
38:09
Speaker 1: you're looking at a body that may, for instance, be
38:11
Speaker 1: in an advanced state of decomposition. You might only have
38:14
Speaker 1: skeletal remains that are left. You might only have a
38:17
Speaker 1: partial skeleton. What are you going to do if, say,
38:20
Speaker 1: from the pelvis down that's all that remains, the upper torso,
38:24
Speaker 1: the arms, small small bones, of the hand, the ribs,
38:29
Speaker 1: the vertebra are scattered about, and the skull is missing, say,
38:32
Speaker 1: for instance, like the skulls they found out by the road,
38:36
Speaker 1: you know, and so it comes in degrees, and they
38:39
Speaker 1: would have in the way this is organized, the scene
38:42
Speaker 1: would have been sectioned off when it comes to the
38:44
Speaker 1: processing area. The processing area is completely separate, say, for instance,
38:49
Speaker 1: from the crime scene itself or the scenes where these
38:53
Speaker 1: bodies are found. They're going to have an area that's
38:56
Speaker 1: set up over there that they've got portable X ray,
38:58
Speaker 1: they've got portable topsy services that are there. They've got
39:03
Speaker 1: a separate records area, they've actually got believed or not.
39:06
Speaker 1: They've actually got dental stations over there, so that they
39:08
Speaker 1: would take a skull, for instance, and there would be
39:11
Speaker 1: a forensic odentologist or dentist standing there with their tools
39:17
Speaker 1: looking at teeth very very carefully and making annotations about
39:22
Speaker 1: everything that's going on, orally with a body to see
39:25
Speaker 1: if there's any restorations Ofmalgam's missing teeth, if the person
39:30
Speaker 1: had some kind of say, for instance, had evidence of
39:33
Speaker 1: a root canal, or if they had evidence of say
39:36
Speaker 1: a bridge that was in place, or dentures for instance,
39:40
Speaker 1: they would look at everything to try to gather as
39:42
Speaker 1: much information as they could about that one remain and
39:46
Speaker 1: begin to piece this together, and you try to essentially
39:50
Speaker 1: breathe life into the debt at this point in time
39:52
Speaker 1: to tell their history and everything is important. You know,
39:55
Speaker 1: all surgery scars or perhaps if all you have are
39:58
Speaker 1: skeletal remains you've mentioned early, they're rendering down of bodies
40:01
Speaker 1: that might have pins that have been in place, say
40:04
Speaker 1: in bones, for instance, as a result of some kind
40:07
Speaker 1: of orthopedic surgery. That's going to be essential information at
40:11
Speaker 1: this point in time. So every bit of information and
40:15
Speaker 1: data that you can come across relative to these bodies
40:18
Speaker 1: is going to be essential if you want to bring
40:21
Speaker 1: this thing to an end. So again, Joe, we know
40:23
Speaker 1: that over one hundred bodies were not identified. What happens now?
40:27
Speaker 1: You know, if our listeners wish to, they can still
40:30
Speaker 1: go to the GBI website and there is a section
40:35
Speaker 1: and this gives you. This gives you an idea where
40:40
Speaker 1: it's exactly it's I think we're two weeks past it,
40:43
Speaker 1: but the twenty year anniversary just happened relative to tri
40:48
Speaker 1: state to give you an idea of how seriously. The
40:54
Speaker 1: GBI takes this. They have an entire web page on
40:58
Speaker 1: their website that is devoted to strictly the Tri State
41:01
Speaker 1: Crematory case, and anybody that wants to can go through
41:05
Speaker 1: there and look at the list of the remains that
41:08
Speaker 1: still to this day remain unidentified. And again, this is
41:15
Speaker 1: something that is almost counterintuitive to the way we normally
41:20
Speaker 1: conduct investigations because if we come across just so our
41:24
Speaker 1: listeners can grasp this, if we come across a body,
41:31
Speaker 1: an individual body that we're working a case on, and
41:35
Speaker 1: we try very very diligently to get that person identified,
41:38
Speaker 1: we are looking specifically for a family Jackie. Everybody that's
41:44
Speaker 1: out there and at some point in time been previously
41:47
Speaker 1: accounted for. It had already been identified at some point
41:52
Speaker 1: in time in the history of those remains. The problem
41:56
Speaker 1: is is that the families are no longer aware of it.
41:59
Speaker 1: They just assumed that their loved one was cremated and
42:02
Speaker 1: they've moved on with their life at this point in time.
42:05
Speaker 1: So I don't know how much success that there will
42:09
Speaker 1: be in trying to get the remainder of these bodies,
42:12
Speaker 1: which there are quite a number of. At the end
42:16
Speaker 1: of the date how much success they will happen getting
42:19
Speaker 1: these remains identified. As you were talking, Joe, I did
42:22
Speaker 1: what you said. I went to the GBI website and
42:25
Speaker 1: that is GBI dot Georgia dot gov forward slash Tri
42:31
Speaker 1: Tri dash State dash Crematory dash U I d GBI
42:40
Speaker 1: dot Georgia dot gov slash Tri dash State dash Crematory
42:47
Speaker 1: dash UID. I would suggest that anybody that is from
42:51
Speaker 1: the Tri state area Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama that may have,
42:57
Speaker 1: um you know, suffered a loss in their family and
43:01
Speaker 1: their family member had been cremated, I would suggest at
43:05
Speaker 1: least take a look, just take a look and see
43:08
Speaker 1: what is on that list, because you never know, you
43:11
Speaker 1: might be the answer to one of these big questions
43:14
Speaker 1: that remains, and that is who in fact are these individuals.
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Speaker 1: Because as time has gone on, people have forgotten about
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Speaker 1: this case, and you know, reflectively we look back at
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Speaker 1: it and it is a case that is going to
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Speaker 1: live with everybody I think that was out at that scene.
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Speaker 1: It still impacts them to this day and that community
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Speaker 1: up there will never ever be the same. Joseph Scott
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Speaker 1: Morgan and this body backs