Tommy Ray Marsh

News Obituary Article

Father of crematory case suspect dies

By NORMAN AREY

LaFayette --- Tommy Ray Marsh, the father of Tri-State Crematory operator Ray Brent Marsh, died of a heart attack Tuesday.

Marsh, 76, went into cardiac arrest at his home in Noble at 10:31 a.m. His daughter, LaShea, called Walker County's 911 number.

According to Walker coroner DeWayne Wilson, Marsh was taken to the Hutchinson Medical Center in Fort Oglethorpe and was given CPR on the way.

"I'm not sure if he was pronounced dead on arrival or died in the emergency room," Wilson said.

Tommy Ray Marsh, who operated the crematorium until mid-1996 when he turned it over to his son, had been ill since then. He had several strokes and also had dementia.

The younger Marsh is under house arrest, charged with 338 counts of theft by deception and 64 counts of abuse of a corpse after 334 bodies were found buried and strewn about the Tri-State property in February and March of 2002. Marsh's case is scheduled to go before a Walker grand jury June 3.

District Attorney Herbert Franklin said he did not think the death of the older Marsh would affect the state's criminal case against Ray Brent Marsh.

Marsh family members, individually, had been mentioned in the 100-plus civil lawsuits that have since been ruled a class-action suit.

Dalton lawyer Robert Smalley, spokesman for the plaintiffs, said Marsh's death should have little impact on the civil litigation.

The civil trial is set to begin Oct. 6 in the federal courthouse in Rome.

© 2003 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution