The smell of life and death — and everything in between
In early 2002, a woman walking her dog in the woods adjacent to Tri-State Crematory in the Appalachian town of Noble, Georgia, found a human skull. Arriving investigators discovered body parts scattered all over the woods, and when they entered the crematory compound, they immediately called in FEMA.
What they encountered on the premises was a confusion of cadavers rotting in various holding crypts and earthen pits. A coffin left in the crematory yard contained a green-black stew of human bones. The scene was beyond grim: corpses jellying into dreadlocks of waxen gray material, fermented fat and muscle twisted…
