Near dumped bodies, crematory operator's family cemetery neat
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Posted 7:16PM on Thursday, March 7, 2002
NOBLE - While overseeing the Tri-State Crematory grounds littered with hundreds of decaying bodies, Ray Brent Marsh helped maintain well-kept graves of relatives in a cemetery that bears his family's name. <br>
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Marsh's grandparents, dozens of other relatives and more than a dozen family friends are buried at the neatly mowed Marsh Cemetery a few hundred yards from the crematory. <br>
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His 80-year-old uncle, Jim Marsh, says the family owns and has largely maintained the 100-yard long, 50-yard wide stretch of cemetery property for decades. <br>
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Graves at the cemetery are marked with ornate granite headstones bearing messages such as ``Gone But Not Forgotten'' and ``Love Lives On.'' <br>
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Ray Brent Marsh's grandfather, W. Samuel Marsh, founded the cemetery in the late 1950s. He died in 1962. A tombstone engraved with ``Memory Lane'' and plastic flowers adorn his grave. <br>
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Twenty-eight-year-old Ray Brent Marsh is in jail charged with 174 counts of theft by deception. He is accused of taking money for cremations that were not performed. <br>
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Ray Brent Marsh and his parents, Ray and Clara Marsh, have declined comment since investigators discovered discarded bodies at the family-owned crematory February 15.