Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Live At Daybreak

Investigators Looking Into Motive Behind Corpse Scam

Aired February 20, 2002 - 06:33   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
COSTELLO: OK, if you're eating your breakfast right now, this next story is pretty gruesome. You've heard about it, scores and scores of human corpses are being found on the grounds of that crematorium in North Georgia. In addition to looking for more bodies, investigators also want to know the motive for this nightmare.

CNN's Art Harris looks at that.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ART HARRIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: For days investigators find body after body on land where the parents of Brent Marsh lives -- then a raid on his home two doors away. Armed with a search warrant, more than a dozen agents hit the home of the suspect jailed in an alleged corpse scam -- bodies scattered about that he had been paid to cremate.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're here executing a search warrant at the premises to recover business records related to the operation of the crematoria.

HARRIS: Next to the house, they also search a new garage, inside a Cadillac and a shiny pickup truck and a possible paper trail in the trash, culled (ph) the house, and more bodies.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In executing the search warrant, we found a coffin on the ground at the shoreline of the lake and it - we'd opened the casket, and it contained a decaying body.

HARRIS: Then, a back hoe digs up five more bodies behind the house as investigators expand the search.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We will definitely search the lake.

HARRIS: Now as the body count goes up, a question of motive.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's the million-dollar question, I guess.

HARRIS: If money is a motive, investigators say the number of bodies found on the property could help shed light on just how much money the operation did make. Friends and relatives say it was a family business started by the father, then supervised by the mother, a retired high school teacher, and in recent years run by their son.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What motivated this young man, do you think?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To keep his mother satisfied and to keep her pleased, you know, with him. That's what I think.

HARRIS: Brent Marsh picked up bodies for more than 30 funeral homes in three states. Many mortuaries charge around $1,400 for cremation, a service sometimes farmed out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Marshes were paid approximately $300 per body, and if they had cremated the bodies like they should have, it would have cost them about $25 of that 300.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And people get wealthy with $275 per body?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It depends on what your volume is.

HARRIS: Did the business put profit ahead of repairing a broken incinerator? The sheriff says that's what the suspect told him. But if the Marshes had signed up for an $800 a year service contract when they bought it in the 80's, the manufacturer says there would be no problem now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We too are perplexed, but at this point it just looks like irresponsibility personified.

HARRIS: A family held in high-esteem. Brent Marsh, a college graduate, married with a new baby. Friends and neighbors cannot fathom why.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't know. That's what got me so messed up, you know. Knowing him as many years as I knew him, you know, I never saw nothing like this in him.

HARRIS: If you could ask the Marshes one question, what would it be?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Why? Why? That's all I got to say. Why would you do that?

HARRIS: As law enforcement expands its investigation, business records may help follow the money. But at this point motive remains as uncertain as the final body count.

Art Harris, CNN, Walker County, Georgia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com