Forensics teams Tuesday had recovered 149 bodies left to rot outside the northwest Georgia crematory, finding skeletons sealed in vaults and bodies that had been dragged into a shed.
A mother of three whose own mother died January 30 and was found dumped in the 16-acre area behind the crematory, Leatha Shropshire, said ``I feel like I'm in a horror movie.''
Clutching a framed photograph of her mother, Shropshire said she is more fortunate than hundreds of others who are still waiting to see if their loved ones can be identified from the intermingled skeletons.
She said, ``We just lost our mother two weeks ago and we are having to do this all over again. The waiting was killing us. There is no way to describe what that kind of waiting is like.''
Ray Brent Marsh, operator of the crematory in the rural town of Noble 20 miles south of Chattanooga, Tennessee, was arrested for a second time and authorities filed eleven new theft-by-deception charges against him, bringing the total to 16.
The state's chief medical examiner, Kris Sperry, said ``By the hour, this is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. I don't have a theory because none of this makes sense. I don't think it ever will.''
Officials examined the contents of 51 urns that had been sent to relatives. Officials said some contained powdered cement or potting soil rather than human remains. Other urns appeared to contain human remains, but it was not clear whose.
Sperry said there was no way to make a positive identity using cremated remains, but officials said at least one family received remains that did not belong to their relative. The relative's remains were identified among those recovered from the grounds.
http://accesswdun.com/article/2002/2/198586