Crematory operator's acts surprise neighbors

NOBLE, Ga. -- He was in line to be deacon of his church. He coached youth football. He was a young man respected in this small community as the heir to a solid family business.

And yet, Ray Brent Marsh is now at the center of a ghastly discovery that is growing by the day in the pine woods of northern Georgia:

Hundreds of decaying or mummified bodies have been found stacked in pits, caskets and above-ground vaults on the Marsh family property behind their business, the Tri-State Crematory.

Authorities trying to comprehend the tragedy have speculated that the 28-year-old Marsh was greedy, or just lazy, that he simply left bodies wherever it was convenient. Townspeople are struggling to understand how he could have done such a thing and lived such an outwardly normal, respectable life.

Pearl Goodloe, a longtime neighbor, said that maybe Marsh was just desensitized to death after so many years around the crematorium, which was run for years by his parents.

"If you grow up around it," she said, "you're comfortable with it."

Marsh took over the business six years ago, and people who live around the crematorium said they watched him coming and going on their narrow country road in this county of 30,0000.

They figured all along he was making a good living, minding his own business and his family's.

"His whole family, they are outstanding people," said the Rev. William Stamper, pastor of New Home Missionary Baptist Church, where the Marsh family have long been members.

At the church, Marsh was a candidate to become a deacon and was always quick to organize games, to be the master of ceremonies at church events.

Often, Goodloe said, the pastor would announce to the small congregation: "We are missing Brother Brent because he had to work today."

People who knew him from the city recreation department, where Marsh coached youth football and basketball, said he was always good with children.

He has a daughter of his own, just 2 weeks old.

At the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Marsh was a linebacker on the football team from 1992 to 1995.