Thursday, February 15, 2007

walker county



Our new 'home away from home' is in Walker County, Georgia.

Walker County was the home of Cherokee Indians, a famous battleground for the Civil War, but more recently it was the home of the infamous Tri-State Crematory.

This week marks five years since investigators found over 300 hundred human remains littering the property around Tri-State Crematory .

Some highlights from the recent local newspaper article:

The paperwork fills an 8-by-16 foot room in the sheriff’s department.

The county coroner has 178 sets of unclaimed cremains in his office.

The GBI still has a link on its website for those who may be able to assist with the identification of some remains.

After pleading guilty to 787 counts including theft by taking, abuse of corpse and making false statements, Brent Marsh is serving a 12-year sentence in a Georgia prison. He will become eligible for parole in July 2008.

Just last week, Marsh and his attorney claim he was suffering from mercury poisoning "from a poorly built ventilation system that vented gas and particles from cremations into the room where Marsh worked."

This latest claim does not set well with the local folks, you can still hear grumbling around town. The county is just now getting out of debt for the huge cost of the excavation and police coverage. Even though it was "one of the biggest news stories in the history of Georgia," the folks around here wish it would just go away.

spring