A sprawling investigation to identify 18 decomposing bodies found at a South Georgia funeral home last weekend has led scores of people to get in touch with the authorities.
Some are worried their deceased loved ones might be among the unidentified. Others are worried the ashes the funeral home gave them might not be their family members’ cremains.
Jason Seacrist, special agent in charge of the GBI’s post in Douglas, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that investigators have been in contact with upward of 125 people whose families patronized Johnson Funeral & Cremation Services.
“And we still have more to talk to,” Seacrist said Wednesday evening.
The funeral parlor’s proprietor, Chris Lee Johnson, 39, has been charged with 17 counts of abuse of a dead body. His arrest came after the authorities said they discovered the bodies in various stages of decomposition when they went to the Douglas property to evict Johnson.
“Even if there were legitimate burials or legitimate cremations, it calls it all into question and makes families wonder,” Seacrist said. “They’re just concerned, because they’re just not sure what really happened to their loved ones.”
‘The what-if game’
The Coffee County funeral home’s website lists obituaries for 36 people this year alone. One fear among many locals, some of whom have spoken to the AJC, involves whether the cremains they’ve received are even real.
After news of the grim discovery spread, Kaitlyn Payne, who lives east of Douglas in the neighboring town of Nicholls, was upset because in recent months the bodies of her father and her mother-in-law were taken to Johnson’s mortuary when they died.
Her dad, Steven Allen Payne, lived in nearby Atkinson County. He died May 24 at age 63. Her mother-in-law, Teresa Fussell of Douglas, died March 6. She was 61.
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Kaitlyn Payne said weeks, possibly more than a month, passed before her family received what they then believed were her father’s cremains. She said her family called the funeral home to ask Johnson what was taking so long.
“He kept saying the urn was on back-order. And then we finally had enough and that’s when we said that we just wanted his ashes,” Kaitlyn Payne, 29, said Wednesday.
Steven Payne’s obituary on the funeral home’s website is the 11th most recent one listed. Fussell’s is the 19th most recent.
“It started hitting us really hard, trying to play the what-if game, if what was given to us was actually my daddy,” Kaitlyn Payne said.
Her family has been contacted by investigators asking if there were identifiable markings that might help them determine whether her father’s body was among those found.
“But we haven’t been told if he was one of the 18 yet,” she said.
Kaitlyn Payne said the GBI has collected her father’s cremains as well as Fussell’s for testing to at least determine whether they are human. It was unclear whether more precise identification is possible.
“They said it could be up to two months before we receive those (ashes) back if they are who they say they are,” she said. “It’s a waiting game and we’re trying to be as patient as we can, but it’s slowly coming to where we can’t be patient much longer.”
Possible motive unclear
Arrest warrants allege Johnson’s “willful negligence in his duties as a funeral home director and intentional disregard of proper storage” led to remains being kept for excessive periods, resulting in severe disfigurement of 17 bodies.
Johnson was denied bail at his first court appearance and is being held in the Coffee County jail. Johnson’s defense attorney, Robert E. Walker of Ocilla, did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment Thursday.
Seacrist, the GBI agent, declined to discuss possible motives in the case, although investigators are probing Johnson’s business practices in the wake of his eviction.
At this stage, he said, the priority is identifying the 18 decomposing bodies, which are now at the GBI medical examiner’s office in Decatur.
Seacrist added investigators are talking to potentially affected families about “the nature of the services that (the) Johnson funeral home provided, to get an understanding of that process and how that process may have changed over the years,” and comparing that to procedures for a typical funeral home.
He did not divulge whether investigators have an idea how long the corpses they found had been stored or why they had not been buried or cremated in a timely manner.
Identifying the bodies could take a long time.
“The problem is, due to the state of the remains in some cases, some are going to be easier (to ID) than others,” Seacrist said.
‘Wasn’t what we wanted’
The daughter of another man whose funeral was handled by Johnson is now worried by the prospect that her dad might not have been buried at all.
Douglas native Joel Clinton Tanner, an avid golfer and roofing company superintendent, died June 2 in Jacksonville, Florida. He was 60.
As best his family knows, he was buried 13 days later in Douglas City Cemetery near the upper reaches of Twenty Mile Creek on the north side of town.
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His daughter, Miriah Tanner, 27, also of Jacksonville, said that as of midweek her family had not received a death certificate for him, a process that funeral homes routinely handle within a few weeks.
Perhaps more alarmingly, she recalled that on the day of her father’s graveside service she and her family had tried to stay at the cemetery while he was being buried in his casket. She said Johnson told them they couldn’t watch.
“Chris Johnson was, like, ‘You can’t stay and see him lowered into the ground,’” Miriah Tanner said.
She also recalled that when her family first went to the funeral home to make arrangements for her father’s service, Johnson seemed professional.
“He listened to what we had to say,” she said.
But her family was disappointed at the very basic obituary Johnson wrote. Also, a memorial slideshow of Joel Tanner’s life in pictures was not what they’d asked for.
“The service just wasn’t what we wanted,” Miriah Tanner said. “It was very thrown together.”
For months, she said, her family has gone “back and forth” with Johnson about obtaining her father’s death certificate.
“The last time we heard from him was about July or August,” she said. “Then he stopped answering phone calls.”
‘A very large team’
All of those concerns have inundated investigators.
GBI agents based in Douglas, a city of 12,000, are responsible for an 11-county area.
Their territory stretches from the Okefenokee Swamp at the Florida border north some 100 miles to the Ocmulgee River above Hazlehurst.
If there is any fortuitous circumstance at all in the case, it might be that the regional headquarters in Douglas sits less than 750 yards from the funeral home.
The 7,500-square-foot, two-toned gray structure with an awning-like roofline that houses the funeral parlor overlooks U.S. 441. The place was built in 1990. In past incarnations it has been a restaurant.
GBI agents have been brought in from other parts of the state to assist with the high volume of interviews and other efforts. A pair of intelligence analysts have assisted in organizing the flood of leads.
“We’ve had a very large team working out of our office to help follow up on everything,” Seacrist said.
