She asked to see the tattoo.
If it was, indeed, her father’s body lying in the crematory, she wanted to verify that there was a rose inked on his left arm, along with the names of his children — Stephanie, Daniel and Kaitlyn.
Seeing it, as Kaitlyn Payne put it Friday, would let her know for sure that, this time, the cremains she and her family were to receive were actually his.
And who could blame her for wondering?
She and her mother and siblings had been misled before — given someone else’s ashes, or another substance passed off as cremains — by the funeral home they’d enlisted in the days after her dad’s death in late May, she said.
Eighteen corpses were found in varying stages of decomposition at the now-defunct Johnson Funeral & Cremation Services in Coffee County in late October. The gruesome discovery was made when authorities went to evict the proprietor.
Weeks later, the GBI is continuing the painstaking process of trying to identify the remains. Of the 18, at least 13 had been identified as of midweek. It appeared that some local families who used the South Georgia funeral home’s services were still awaiting word of whether their loved ones’ remains were among those discovered.
On Wednesday, the Paynes were informed by investigators that DNA tests had confirmed the identity of Steven Allen Payne, an asphalt-milling foreman who died of lung cancer on May 24 at age 63.
It still isn’t clear why the bodies were stored for so long without being given proper, timely burials or cremations.
Proprietor Chris Lee Johnson, 39, has since been jailed without bond, charged with 17 counts of abuse of a dead body.
In the five-plus weeks since macabre news of what transpired inside his funeral parlor first shook Douglas, a city of about 12,000, the folks across town at Ricketson Funeral Home, founded in 1974, have volunteered their services.
They promised to handle arrangements free of charge for any of the families whose loved ones’ bodies were discovered at Johnson’s business.
So far, the Ricketsons have taken in 11 of the bodies, some deceased since before May, said Phyllis V. Ricketson, the parlor’s office and finance manager.
“It’s still very bad, the circumstances,” she told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution by phone on Thursday. “But we tried to help these families know that somebody else cared, that there are people with integrity.”
A doctor from St. Simons Island has donated to the cause, giving away urns that he makes.
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
On Friday morning, Steven Payne’s relatives gathered to say their final goodbyes to him for a second time.
A Michigan native, he had settled in Willacoochee near the Alapaha River, between Tifton and Waycross.
Kaitlyn, 29, said her dad was a fan of the Florida Gators and that he enjoyed gardening, grilling and his 11 grandchildren.
When Kaityn asked a Ricketson Funeral Home staffer to see that rose tattoo on her father’s arm, just to make sure, she was told it wasn’t possible.
He was too decomposed for that.
She recalled in a telephone interview that a funeral director at Ricketson’s almost broke down in tears when he told her the rose wouldn’t be distinguishable.
But, before standing beside the sealed box that held her dad’s remains, Kaitlyn was shown a photograph of the deceased man’s arm.
There was no rose tattoo in the picture, but on his wrist was a hospital armband with his name and birth date and his chemo bracelet, confirmation enough for her that, yes, this was her daddy.
She and her mother were the only ones who looked at the picture.
“So nobody else would see it,” she said, “and be horrified.”
The image brought her peace of mind, she later said, but “it broke me completely.”
At least, Kaitlyn said, “He can finally rest.”
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