Tri-State Crematory
The Tri-State Crematory was the subject of an incident in the early twenty-first century in which over three hundred bodies that had been consigned to the crematorium for proper disposal were never cremated but instead just dumped on the site.
Background
The crematorium was founded by Ray Marsh in the mid-1970s and was located in the northwest part of the state of Georgia, on the north side of the city of La Fayette. It had for many years provided cremation services for a number of funeral homes in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee. Many funeral homes did not have their own cremation facilities and shipped bodies to Tri-State for cremation.
Ray Marsh's health deteriorated in the mid-1990s to the point of being bedridden most of the time. At that point his son, Ray Brent Marsh, took over operation of the business.
Discovery and identification of the remains
In early 2002 the Environmental Protection Agency office in Atlanta received an anonymous tip that something was amiss at Tri-State. It sent officers to investigate the property, who discovered a skull and some bones that were human in origin. On February 15, 2002, investigators stumbled onto a grisly scene: piles of rotting human bodies were discovered in a storage shed, in vaults, and throughout the property. Investigators originally believed that the remains were as old as fifteen years, but testing revealed they had been on the site for only a few years, since the late 1990s.
A federal disaster team was brought into the area, along with a portable morgue shipped from Maryland. The team undertook to identify the remains, a process made difficult since many of the corpses were in advanced stages of decomposition, and some were little more than skeletons. Eventually 334 bodies were discovered, of which about 200 were identified. DNA testing was available for those cases where a living relative was available, but in other cases it was unlikely officials would ever be able to make identifications.
Failure to cremate
It turned out that sometime after Ray Brent Marsh took over the business, he simply stopped performing cremations. He instead disposed of the bodies by burying them, placing them in the storage shed, or simply dumping them in the woods behind the crematory buildings. He would often return what appeared to be ashes to the families, but later investigation revealed these to be concrete dust or wood chips. In response to Marsh's claim that the cremation oven was broken, the oven was tested and found to be in working order. Several crematory operators at the time commented that even if the machine had broken down, proper maintenance would have kept the incinerator working, noting that most oven manufacturers have regular maintenance programs available. They further opined that even had the machinery suddenly broken down it was still incumbent upon Marsh to make arrangments for immediate repairs.
Ray Brent Marsh was arrested on over 300 felony charges, including theft by deception and abuse of a corpse, eventually being charged on 787 criminal counts. He awaits criminal trial, scheduled for October 2004. The motives behind Marsh's actions were unclear, as it would have been far less trouble to simply cremate the remains than to dump them. It may be, however, that his motive was a personal one: in the weeks following the discovery, prosecutors reported that pornography and photos of bodies in various stages of decomposition had been discovered on Marsh's computer.
Litigation
Almost seventeen hundred members of the families of the identified corpses filed lawsuits against Tri-State and the funeral homes that had shipped the bodies there, and were eventually granted class-action status. Eventually a deal was reached in which the property of the Marsh family was sold, but these assets were far too small to pay all the claims against them. In August 2004 the families settled with the Marsh family's insurer for $80 million, subject to the court's pending determination that the incident was actually covered by the family's homeowner's policy. Attorneys for the families have stated they would like all the crematory buildings torn down and the property returned to a natural, park-like state as a way of permanently honoring the victims of the incident.
Failures of inspection, regulation and enforcement
Many in the funeral industry and government pointed to a lack of regulation and inspection as a factor contributing to the incident. Many of the funeral homes never inspected the crematory to learn its operating procedures, and never ensured that cremations were actually being carried out. Although the state of Georgia had pertinent regulations, a loophole in the law allowed crematories like Tri-State who dealt only with funeral homes to operate without a license, allowing them to go without state inspection. The state has since moved to tighten its regulations.
The Tri-State incident was representative of a larger regulatory laxity regarding crematoria in the United States. Regulation in some parts of the country had been weak; some states had no regulation at all, and except for EPA emissions regulations, many crematoria had been essentially unregulated. In Michigan, for example, a change in the law was sought by a legislator who was also funeral director, after discovering that neligent disposal of a body was not a crime in that state. Further, even where regulation was in place lack of enforcement often remained a problem, as in Ohio which was unable to enforce its laws for a time due to a lack of trained inspectors.
In the aftermath, the Cremation Society of North America declared that funeral homes should use only reputable crematoria for cremation of remains, and only crematoria that they trust. The Society called the treatment of remains at Tri-State "an abuse of the most sacred trust" placed in the funeral service industry, a sentiment echoed by others in the industry.
