Tri-State Crematory

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The Tri-State Crematory was the subject of a national incident in the United States in the early 2000s leading to litigation and criminal prosecution, in which over three hundred bodies that had been consigned to a crematorium for proper disposal were never cremated but instead were dumped on the crematorium's site.

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[edit] Background

The crematorium was founded by Ray Marsh in the mid-1970s and was located in the Noble community in northwest Georgia, north of the city of LaFayette. 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 transferred the deceased 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.

[edit] Discovery and identification of the remains

In early 2002, the United States Environmental Protection Agency office in Atlanta received an anonymous tip that something was amiss at Tri-State Crematory. The EPA officers sent to investigate the property 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. In fact, evidence revealed that most of the bodies received at Tri-State were cremated. Between 1996 and the date of the discovery, over 2000 bodies were sent to Tri-State and officials during their criminal investigation discovered 339 uncremated bodies.

It was later discovered that a propane delivery truck driver had complained on at least two occasions to the Walker County Sheriff's Department about seeing bodies on the Marsh property. Late on the afternoon of February 14, 2002, he made a fuel delivery and again called police. On the morning of February 15, 2002, Sheriff Steve Wilson was among the first to discover the bodies.

An Atlanta television station, WAGA-TV, Fox 5 and reporter Daniel Ronan also received a tip of unusual activity at the crematory and within hours the story, the bizarre discovery was the lead story on most newscasts and on the front page of newspapers worldwide.

A federal disaster team was brought into the area along with a portable morgue shipped from Maryland. The team began the process of trying to identify the remains, a process made difficult since many of the corpses were in advanced stages of decomposition. Some were little more than skeletons. Experts hired by the Marsh attorneys, Stuart James [1] and Frank Jenkins, were prepared to testify that the methods of recovery were questionable and that the methods were made more difficult because of the lack of trained experts undertaking the investigation on the Marsh property. The experts, however, never testified because the civil cases against Tri-State and the funeral homes that had used Tri-State to perform cremation settled after a second trial had begun in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

Eventually, 339 bodies were discovered. Of these, about 200 were identified. DNA testing was possible in those cases where a living relative was available. But in other cases, it was unlikely officials would ever be able to make identifications.

[edit] Failure to cremate

It turned out that sometime after Ray Brent Marsh took over the business, he apparently had issues in performing cremations. Many claimed he simply stopped performing cremations. However, data that was to be offered at trial in his defense showed that approximately 1900 to 2000 bodies were received by Brent Marsh, and 339 remained uncremated. It was alleged that he instead disposed of the bodies by burying them, placing them in the storage shed, or simply stacking 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. In response to Marsh's claim that the cremation oven was broken, the oven was tested and found to be in working order, although subsequent examinations by experts did demonstrate some issues with the retort, often referred to as the oven. 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 arrangements for immediate repairs.

[edit] Criminal prosecution

Ray Brent Marsh was arrested on over 300 criminal violations and was ultimately charged by the State of Georgia with 787 felony counts, including theft by deception, abusing a corpse, burial service related fraud and giving false statements. Marsh was facing a prison sentence of more than eight thousand years. Marsh was represented by McCracken Poston, who a few years before had been the lawyer for Alvin "The Zenith Man" Ridley from nearby Ringgold, Georgia, and Ron Cordova of Newport Beach, California. Cordova was a former Orange County, California prosecutor and like Poston, had served in the state legislature. Both Poston and Cordova are experienced criminal lawyers who first teamed up two years earlier in the trial of Byron Looper for the murder of a Tennessee state senator. The criminal cases against Marsh were settled after the Georgia Supreme Court had certified for review the defense question of whether a human corpse had any pecuniary value, an issue vital to the case in order to determine if the thefts could even be criminally prosecuted. Marsh eventually pled guilty and is currently serving a twelve year sentence with credit for the time he had spent in custody before obtaining pretrial release on bond.

[edit] Litigation

Almost seventeen hundred members of the families of the identified corpses sued Tri-State and the funeral homes that had shipped the bodies there, and were eventually granted class-action status in two courts in two different states. Class-action status was granted by Judge Neil Thomas in Hamilton County Tennessee Circuit Court. Judge Harold Murphy in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia also granted class-action status.

The funeral homes as well sued Tri-State and Marsh, eventually settling first for $36 million with the funeral home defendants. Ultimately, the Marsh defendants also settled for $3.5 million after their insurer, Georgia Farm Bureau, agreed to pay the settlement. After heated negotiations among the attorneys regarding the exact terms and conditions of the settlement, the settlement failed. The parties could not effectuate a settlement that would globally resolve all cases in Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama. Stuart James and Frank Jenkins asserted that the settlement could not be effectuated and that the parties never could complete the settlement due to the inability to reach an agreement to put together a settlement class globally resolving the cases. Judge Harold Murphy of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia thereafter ordered a second trial. The second trial began in August of 2004.

During the second trial in August 2004, the families settled with the Marsh family by agreeing to a conservation easement on the Marsh property and an uncollectable judgment against the Marsh family for $80 million, subject to a state court's pending determination that the incident was actually covered by the family's homeowner's policy. Stuart James and Frank Jenkins, the attorneys for the Marsh family in the civil litigation, crafted a judgment that was not collectable against any of the Marsh defendants. Therefore, the plaintiffs' class filed a claim against Georgia Farm Bureau in State Court, that claim settled in late 2007 for $18 million dollars resulting in the $80 million dollar judgment being set aside and a settlement of $18 million going to the plaintiff's class members. Georgia Farm Bureau was represented by Duke Groover and Ben Land of the State of Georgia. Georgia Farm Bureau is paying the settlement under a homeowner's policy of insurance.

Much of the earlier settlement with the funeral homes has been paid. The Marsh family has not paid any amount to the plaintiff's class, and agreed to set aside an acre of land as a conservation easement, keeping the land in a natural state in rememberence of those who were found on the property. The public does not have access to the land, and the land remains titled in the Marsh family name.

Several claims remain in Tennessee and are pending in the Tennessee Court of Appeals. Claims that are being handled by plaintiffs' attorney Bill Brown and by Terri Crawford pro se have been dismissed by Judge Neil Thomas and the dismissal upheld by the Tennessee Court of Appeals. Mr. Brown and Ms. Crawford have requested the Tennessee Supreme Court to review the dismissal of the claims. Stuart James represents Brent Marsh in these appeals and the Tennessee Supreme Court has the request for appeal under consideration.

Mr. Brown, on behalf of certain plaintiffs living in Bradley County Tennessee, has also fought to require Brent Marsh to testify in court on the claims that remain in the Bradley County Circuit Court in Cleveland, Tennessee. Mr. Brown asserted that it was time for Mr. Marsh to tell family members what happened to their loved ones bodies, offering an explanation of what he did and what happened to those bodies.

Judge Neil Thomas, to whom the Tennessee civil cases have been specially assigned, held that Mr. Marsh had waived his Fifth Amendment privilege upon pleading guilty to more than 700 felony counts in the State of Georgia. After consulting with his client's criminal law specialists, Ken Poston and Ron Cordova, Stuart James argued that the circumstances of the claim permitted Mr. Marsh to continue to assert his Fifth Amendment privilege. Judge Thomas' ruling that Mr. Marsh had waived his privilege was appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals with the Court of Appeals reversing and remanding the issue of the Fifth Amendment to Judge Thomas for further consideration. The court held that Mr. Marsh could assert his Fifth Amendment privilege in any testimony subject to review by Judge Thomas. No further testimony has been solicited by Mr.Brown.

Walker County Georgia has also sued the Marsh family to recover the cost of its investigation into the incidents on the Marsh property. Walker County claims that it is entitled to recover almost $2 million resulting from its investigation. Frank Jenkins and Stuart James[2] have represented the Marsh defendants in this litigation which resulted in the Walker County Superior Court, Judge Smith sitting specially, dismissing the claims. The Georgia Court of Appeals heard oral argument and issued an opinion upholding the dismissal of the claims. Walker County, through its attorneys Coppedge and Lehman, amended its complaint to allege that Walker County was cleaning up an environmental hazard and is therefore entitled to recover damages. The environmental claim was also dismissed by Judge Smith, and the issues regarding the environmental claim are currently pending in the Georgia Court of Appeals.

[edit] Motives and aftermath

The motives behind Brent Marsh's actions are unclear, as it would have been far less trouble simply to cremate the remains than to dump them. His statement in court when pleading guilty did nothing to clarify: "To those of you who may have come here today looking for answers, I cannot give you," Marsh told the families.

Attorneys for the families have said the families would like all the crematory buildings destroyed and the property returned to a natural, park-like state as a way of permanently honoring the victims of the incident. Stuart James and Frank Jenkins, attorneys for the Marsh family, crafted an agreement creating a conservation easement as part of the Marsh family settlement with the plaintiff's class. Stuart James, the attorney for Marsh, and Robert Smalley an attorney for the plaintiffs' class, supervised the demolition of the building and the creation of the conservation easement, which will remain in perpetuity on the Marsh property. The public has no right of access to the conservation easement.

Brent Marsh was sentenced to concurrent sentences in Georgia and Tennessee for all the criminal charges related to the incident. He received a sentence of twelve years in prison as well as seventy-five years of probation in Georgia. The sentence was the product of a plea bargain which was reached contemporaneously with the settlement of the civil litigation. McCracken Poston and Ron Cordova crafted the plea agreement while Stuart James, Frank Jenkins and Robert Smalley concluded a settlement of the federal civil action after a series of meetings in Rome, Georgia which also included Mr. Poston and the District Attorney prosecuting the Georgia state criminal case against Marsh. The global settlement ended the federal class lawsuit as well as the criminal cases in Georgia and Tennessee.

On February 7, 2007, a week before the five year anniversary of the discoveries at the former crematory, the criminal defense attorneys for Marsh revealed that physiological testing had indicated that Brent Marsh was a victim of mercury toxicity from the cremation of bodies with mercury dental amalgam. They stated that a faulty ventilation system exposed both Marsh and his father to toxic levels of mercury. [1]

[edit] Failures of inspection, regulation and enforcement

The Cremation Society of North America commented in response to the case 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.

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 a funeral director, after discovering that negligent 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.

[edit] Additional Information

[edit] References