Noble - The Special Agents | Chapter 2

Episode Date: July 31, 2024

Two EPA agents investigate a report of human body parts discovered at the rural site of Tri-State Crematory. What they find sets off the biggest investigation in Georgia history.

This podcast contains graphic descriptions of death and decay. Please listen with care. It can take hundreds of years for a human body to return to dust. Immediately after you die, the body begins digesting itself. Breathing halts. Your blood stops circulating. Your body cools, losing one and a half degrees every hour, until it reaches room temperature.

After about two hours, rigor mortis sets in, stiffening your muscles. Small, fluid-filled blisters form on your organs and skin, giving the body a plastic-like sheen. The bacteria in your body, no longer kept in check by the immune system, begin to feast. They consume tissue, releasing methane and other gases in the process. Your body bloats, nearly doubles in size. That unmistakable, horrid odor of death grows for several days, and soon you can be smelled a quarter mile away. Under certain conditions, a process called saponification takes place. It turns your

fatty acids into something called grave wax. Your body becomes soap, and parts of it stay preserved for decades, if not centuries. But more likely, the bugs get you first, because death attracts insects to your body. Flesh flies arrive within minutes, and they, in turn, attract larger predator insects. Ants and wasps come to

eat the flies. Maggots and beetles devour your tissues. Further up the food chain, springtails and spiders eat the predators and turn your corpse into just another place to live. Your body, which once contained hopes and dreams and thoughts and memories, becomes simply an ecosystem. Soon you're just a skeleton, a weakening one. The collagen in your bones goes first, leaving them prone to cracking and crumbling like a chocolate cookie. Erosion in animals, moisture and changes in temperature finish the job that the bacteria and insects started until you become dust.

And so each time a dead body is found or dug up, it looks a little different. Fresh, bloated, decaying, skeletonized, you can find a body in or between any of these states. Only on rare occasions do you find bodies in all of these states and all in the same place. From Waveland and Campside Media, this is Noble. I'm Sean Raviv.

Episode 2, The Special Agents. Robin Hedden sits down at his desk, and he sees the annoying red light on his phone that means he's got another voicemail. He picks up the receiver, taps in the passcode, and hears a message that he can't ignore. It was a female's voice, and she said that she's walked her dog, and that she had found, her dog had found a human body part near a creek, and she wanted it to be looked into. Robin has a unique job. He works for the Environmental Protection Agency in the

Criminal Investigation Division. So Robin's a scientist and a cop. Imagine your chemistry professor becomes a detective. That's Robin. He has similar authority to an FBI agent, just focused on environmental crimes. Like if a bunch of fish are found floating dead in a river near a chemical plant, Robin would be all over that. An environmental crime can be, it's not static, it's dynamic. I can pollute here and it can affect somebody, you know, 10 miles down the road.

On February 15, 2002, when Robin gets that voicemail about human remains near a creek, he's duty agent in the EPA office in Atlanta. That means it's his turn to basically be an office grunt for a few days. He does things like copying records and responding to all the complaints that come in. And Robin always takes complaints seriously, no matter how odd. That's just who he is. Like that one time he spent four hours listening to a guy who was sure that Little Debbie was putting mercury in his oatmeal cream pies. He wanted to get it off his chest.

And at the end, he said, man, thank you. Nobody else will listen to me. I says, I heard you, brother. Not much I can do about this, but I always listen to what people had to say. It would be easy for Robin to just write up a quick memo about the body parts voicemail. It's such a wild thing to find that it's hard to believe.

I mean, body parts? Come on, man. Besides, it's not the job of the EPA to investigate murderers or missing persons. But Robin is a by-the-book kind of guy, so. Besides, it's not the job of the EPA to investigate murderers or missing persons. But Robin is a by-the-book kind of guy, so he looks into it. And it turns out the woman had actually called in before, months ago. Now she's calling for a second time, so it seems like she's serious. And something she says in her voicemail gives Robin an excuse to investigate.

She found body parts next to a creek. Normally that wouldn't trip any triggers with the criminal division, but she said near a creek. That's a nexus. Okay, that's a possible Clean Water Act nexus. And she said it was near a place called Tri-State Crematory. Robbins speaks to the agent who took the first call. And I'm like, damn it, man, don't you think this is something you need to look at? Really sharp, smart guy. He just figured that's something the sheriff's department, that's what he said, the sheriff's department. I said, dude, it's near a

creek. What if they're dumping body parts in a creek? What if they're dumping formaldehyde in a creek? That needs to be looked at. I'm going to go look at it. He's like, okay, you know, good luck. What Robin doesn't know is that the woman who left the message is none other than Aunt Faye, an assistant for the FBI, and the aunt of Gerald Cook, the gas man. Weeks earlier, Gerald told his aunt everything he'd seen at Tri-State Crematory, and it was her idea to call the EPA. She just made up the dog walking story. She doesn't even have a dog.

And it just so happens that Special Agent Robin Hedden is the one who hears her message. When Robin decides he's going to drive up to the place, this tri-state crematory, the first thing he does is pull in another agent. Larry was a good shot and fairly tall guy. And if you were gonna get in a fight, Larry was a good guy to have with you.

So Robin and Larry drive the 100 miles northwest from Atlanta, not having any idea what they're gonna Robin and Larry drive the 100 miles northwest from Atlanta, not having any idea what they're going to find. They drive north past Lafayette, the seat of Walker County, into Noble. On their paper map, they have trouble locating the crematory, the property owned by the Marsh family.

But eventually they spot the headstone sign that says Tri-State Crematory. Robin doesn't want to just show up unannounced on someone's property, though, so the two men drive on. Noble is not quite farmland, but it isn't a dense suburb by any stretch. The properties in Noble are big,

sometimes many acres. They contain forests and ponds and fields, and the boundaries aren't always fenced off. Instead of knocking on the marsh's door, Robin and Larry approach one of their neighbors. I told the neighbor, I said, look, I need to walk back in those woods. You know, I showed him my credentials and he says, what are you doing? I said, I just need to walk back there. Could I park here, please? And he's like, well, yeah. And so I parked out of the way.

Didn't tell him, oh, I'm looking at tri-state crematory for body parts because see, that's going to make them look bad. And if there's nothing there, this guy don't know that, and he's going to think bad on them. Treat folks the way you want to be treated. So that's how we did it, and we parked there and we walked. They leave their car next to a barn, enter the neighbor's yard, and head toward the Marsh property. After about half a mile, they come to a fence.

Federal law enforcement agents like Robin have the authority to legally trespass on private property under what's called the Open Fields Doctrine. As long as they're not entering buildings or areas immediately surrounding buildings where one would expect privacy, they're good to go. So Robin and Larry cross the fence. They are now on the Marsh family's land. Back there, the property is heavily wooded. There's 10- and 20-year-old pine trees and vines to slow your going.

They enter the woods, and when they come to a creek, they walk up and down the banks looking for human remains, like the caller described. But it's February, and leaves cover the ground a foot deep. After a while of searching, eventually Robin tells Larry, we're not going to find anything here. They start to loop back toward the neighbor's property, where they parked their car, and call it a lost day.

As they walk in the distance, they can see the crematory and some other buildings on the Marsh family's property. There's no trails or anything back there, so we were walking just through the leaves and the brush, and we come upon this thicket. I mean, if you want to find something anywhere, get in the thicket. That's where the stuff's at. So we circled around, went through this briar thicket,

and then there's a little patch of pine trees, and it was pine straw. It was flat. briar thicket and then there's a little patch of pine trees and it was a pine straw it's flat and that i looked and i saw this shiny little kind of a brownish looking i thought it was a rock and i looked at it i went out and i stopped i said ah that's it's not a rock i turned around walked over to it and it was the upper part of a cranium. What did you and Larry say to each other roughly around that time? Holy shit. That's exactly what I said. I was like, holy shit, dude, that's a skull. And Larry goes, good God, it is. Robin Hedden and his partner Larry

record video of the skull with a little camcorder and then slowly work their way back to where they parked their car. Then they drive to a nearby church parking lot. This is no longer a situation for the EPA, so they call 911. Within a few minutes, a couple of detectives from the sheriff's office show up. The county coroner, too. And then, the next call, and probably the most important call,

goes out to a man named Greg Ramey. Greg is a special agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the GBI. He's got dark hair and a trim beard. The energy of a friendly but stern when he needs to be dad. When Greg gets the call, he's at a local field office, and he doesn't take it to be a big deal. So I'm thinking probably somebody somewhere else, you know, has died. It's been a long time since, you know, the person died. They brought a skeletonized body down there to be cremated. You know, in my mind, I'm trying to rationalize everything.

Greg changes into better clothes for walking around in the woods. He lives in Walker County, close to Noble. It's where he grew up. His family there goes back generations, to before the Civil War at least. My great-grandfather was a blacksmith, had a shop out there, and made tools and stuff for all the local folks. My granddaddy farmed back during the Depression, and he said, oh, I was rich.

He said, I owned two teams of mules. You know? I mean, he, you know, and raised eight kids during the Depression. In February of 2002, Greg is married and has two kids at home in Lafayette, living right there

where his family had lived more than a century ago. He and his wife plan to spend their whole lives in Walker County and beyond, really. In all seriousness, I had even told my wife,

if something happens to me, don't bury me. Just take me up to Mars Crematory, have me cremated, scatter my ashes. So after he gets the call, Greg meets the EPA agents Just take me up to Mars Crematory, have me cremated, scatter my ashes. So after he gets the call, Greg meets the EPA agents Robin and Larry,

the county coroner and sheriff's detectives in the church parking lot. Larry gets his video camera out, flips out a little screen on the side, and shows Greg the recording of the skull. No remnants of human flesh on it, anything like that. And at this point, I mean, and everybody's just so nonchalant about it. I mean, nobody's jumping up and down. I had just turned 40 on Wednesday. This was a Friday. It's a Friday afternoon.

Okay, we're all big pranksters. You know, I'm thinking they're punking me. Okay. They're going to walk me out here and say, oh, we've got this skull. And then, you know, boom, somebody jumps out of the wood. Oh, I got you. Honestly, I'm honest. That's what I'm thinking. But these thoughts in the back of Greg's mind don't keep him from doing his job. And so the men get in their vehicles, pull out of the church parking lot and onto the road. They turn past the stone sign that says Tri-State Crematory and go down the driveway.

As Greg parks his maroon Crown Vic, he sees that Brent Marsh, the man who runs the crematory, is already outside. Brent's a big guy, short hair and a slight mustache. Earlier that year, he'd joined the Rotary Club in Lafayette. A nice guy, a likable guy, the kind of guy who'd do anything for you. Greg knew of the Marsh family already, like people often know of each other in a small community. His sister was my little brother's age.

They had gone to high school together and had a homeroom together for a couple of years. So I knew the family that way. My childhood best friend had had Brent's mama, Clara, Miss Marsh, had had her as a teacher over at Chattanooga Valley High School. So I knew the Marsh family just by reputation, stuff like that. I knew Brent had played football at Lafayette High School. He'd been a good athlete, gone to UTC where I graduated college from. He played football up there for a short period of time. So I knew that about him. Your impression of the family was a positive one.

Oh, I mean, everybody in the community respected the Marsh family. They were good folks. Knowing the family's reputation like he does, Greg doesn't expect any trouble. He gets out of his car and goes up to Brent straight off. Introduce myself to him, make sure he's good with the fact that we need to be on the property searching. Yeah, we're good. Do you know anything about what's going on? I don't know anything about what's going on. Greg wants to see where the EPA guys, Robin and Larry, found're good. You know, I don't, do you know anything? You know anything about what's going on? I don't know anything about what's going on. Greg wants to see where the EPA guys, Robin and Larry, found the skull.

So he walks back behind the buildings at the end of the drive and into the woods. And there's a skull there. I mean, it's there. There's no doubt there's a skull laying right there. Brent is there as all of this is going on. And Robin looks at Brent. And he sees that Brent looks scared. When someone's scared, you start getting pale. Your pupils will dilate a little bit. You'll get wide-eyed. You know, you'll be able to see the whites around your iris. It's

that deer in the headlights. Look, that's exactly what it is. The county coroner is there with them. And he points to a staple in the upper jaw of the skull. He explains that morticians put a staple between the upper and lower teeth to hold the jaw closed when preparing a body for burial. So that, at least, is some new information. That means the skull has gone through a funeral home. The coroner points to some small bones on the ground. He tells Greg they are from human fingers and toes. He says, see, there's a bone, there's a bone.

I'm like, dude, that could be a chicken bone. You know, I mean, it's tiny. They walk around the woods a little, heading towards the storage buildings. Then the coroner sees something else and points it out to Greg. It's a cardboard shipping box, two feet wide, a foot tall, and six feet long. So I thought, okay, this is where the punk comes in. This is where they're going to get me. So we ripped the cardboard piece off of it,

and there's a little elderly black gentleman laying in there. And he is partially mummified. His skin was really starting to dry up and stuff. Part of his head had molded, just the moisture content of his body being trapped in that box. He was getting like this white beard and white hair from the mold. A man's suit coat starts moving, and a rat ran out of his sleeve. A little mouse, not a rat, but a mouse.

So at that point, I'm like, oh, okay, this is not punkin'. You know, this is for real. Greg walks out of the woods and back towards the sort of cul-de-sac where they'd parked. Behind him is the crematory building, which looks like a small cabin you'd rent at a state park. Around a bend from the crematory is the house where Brent's parents, Clara and Ray Marsh, live. To the left of the crematory is what some people call a butler building, basically a big metal building. The buildings are locked, so Greg approaches Brent again. I said, Brent, you know, we've got a problem.

We've got a skull out here, and now we've got a full body that's in a casket back over here. And I said, there's some things going on here. And I said, I need you to open up these buildings for me. And you can kind of see that, you know, it's like this big, huge breath, and he just lets it out, just like, oh, dang. It seems like he was expecting something like this to happen and it finally happened. Yeah. In police work, it's just when you know you've caught somebody, they know they're caught, and it's kind of like, oh, this is fixing to get real. They walk over to the Butler building, and Brent unlocks it.

Greg starts to push the heavy metal door in, but it won't open. Something is in the way. Greg pokes his head around the metal door of the Butler building, but something is in the way. He squeezes his head in around the door and shines his flashlight. And there's just, I mean, it's a room probably 40 to 60 feet wide and about that same distance deep. It's just a big metal outbuilding, work building type thing, barn.

And just, I mean, you start shining a light. Everywhere you looked, there was just bodies, just human bodies just laid there. Various, you know, stages of dress or undress. However somebody died at the hospital or at home, that's the way they were. Were they in those crates? No, no, no. They were just lying about on the floor, just everywhere you look. So we just start looking.

I'm like, Brent, what is going on? He just kind of mumbled, you know, in that unintelligible response, he just kind of, uh. The Butler building has another entrance, a tall metal garage door that can be pulled up, big enough for a semi-trailer. It's about four in the afternoon at this point, and as the men pull that door up, light falls on the bodies lying in the building, on the floor. Greg counts about 20.

It's the middle of February, so it was a cool day. It wasn't cold, but it was a typical February day, 45, 50 degree day, you know. You must have been thankful it wasn't a hot day yeah yeah it would have been probably different it had been middle of summer time uh but really realistically was not just you know there wasn't a terrible bad odor um not like i've been in some houses where you know it's summertime the body's been there for a few days and it gets really bad. Right away, Greg recognizes the body, a man named Luther Mason. He was the father of a local accountant. Greg knows Luther Mason died just a couple months earlier, had a funeral and all. Knows his granddaughter was a teacher at Greg's son's school. Greg stares at his dead body in disbelief. Greg asks Brent to open the crematory building, which houses the furnace.

There are half a dozen more bodies in that building, including one lying unburnt inside the furnace itself. They move on to another building behind the crematory. There's another body lying in there, just lying there, and I'm like, I just looked at him. I said, Brent, what are you thinking? You know, he's just kind of. So he's just like following along.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, he's just kind of following along with us, you know. Greg pulls Brent aside at this point. I said, Brent, I said, here's what we need to do right now. I said, I need your help. I said, if you have any way to identify these bodies, do you have any records that can show who is who? And he said, yeah've got you know i've got a little notepad and he said let me go

get it so he comes back he's got this little notepad and there's little greens just a little spiral top flips open and so he starts you know looking down through there and he starts helping us identify some of the bodies as brent identifies a body, Greg puts a little note card on top of that body with a name. So five, six, seven, eight bodies into it, he's telling us, you know, this is so-and-so, this is so-and-so. Well, all of a sudden, he calls one a name that he's already called out. I'm like, Brent, you said that person over there was Mr. So-and-so or Miss So-and-so. Oh, did I? Okay, well, then that one's so-and-so, and this. So-and-so or Miss So-and-so. Oh, did I?

Okay, well, then that one's so-and-so and this is so-and-so. And I said, Brent, how would you know? Well, I just have it up here in my mind. I said, but you have it on paper. And he said, well, I just know in my head. And I said, well, obviously not because you just told us. And I wasn't trying to be confrontational, but I'm trying to get him to rationally tell me rationally how he knows. Then he finally just said, well, I don't know. Did you get the sense that he was rattled?

He was just overwhelmed. I mean, it was just, and then I said, look, I said, and then, and then he kind of said, well, I, that's all I can do. I said, look, and I said, and then he kind of said, well, that's all I can do. I said, wait a minute. We've identified a half a dozen bodies here. And you're telling me this is all you can do? Yeah, this is all I can do. And I said, well, I'm going to need that book. Well, no, I need to keep it.

I said, no, you don't need it anymore. You've done all you can do. I'm going to need the book. And so I just kind of put my hand on the book. He was kind of like, uh, okay. Greg asked Brent if he has any receipts related to his cremation work. Brent goes into his house and comes out with a couple of plastic Walmart bags filled with loose sheets of paper. Meanwhile, other officers on the scene keep searching the Marsh property. Robin Hedden from the EPA walks to the left of the crematory building

through the wide gate of a wooden fence. And there were bones everywhere on the ground behind this little wooden fence. Like the metacarpals, the things in your hands, your feet, they're small bones. They were broken bones. They were littered the ground.

I looked down into the woods and I saw what looked like a rib cage sticking up out of a pile of brush, you know, the side of a rib cage. So Larry and I walked on down there and sure enough, there was a spine and a rib cage. And then there was another, there was a skeleton to the right of that. There was a hole to the right of that. There was a hole that had been dug out in the woods that was partially filled with water. There were skeletons in that. I mean, guys, this is like a horror movie. That's the first thing I thought.

I was like, my God, there's skeletons everywhere. They find bodies in a hearse, another in a van, bodies under pieces of plywood and brush. Some bodies are just sitting out in the open. The bodies are in every state of decomposition you could imagine, but wouldn't want to. Some look fresh, like they were just sunbathing. Some are fully embalmed, the putrefaction hasn't begun. But others are bloated, filled with insects. Some have flesh hanging off the bones. Some are just skeletons or scattered pieces.

Some of their tissues have liquefied almost completely. It's like walking into the scene of a long-ago massacre. All the time that the officers search the property, Brent's parents, Ray and Clara, are inside the house. Clara represents the family, and Greg tells her what they found only 60 or 70 yards from her house, on the property that she and her husband own. Well, she said, I don't know anything about it.

I said, that's fine. You know, y'all are free to come and go out of the house. But everything from here over is law enforcement. Don't interfere with them. But there wasn't really, you know, there wasn't a whole lot of issue about that. Same way with Brent. We told him, you just go back to your house, you know. And he said, you know, am I under arrest? And I said, no, not right now.

Greg's emotional reaction to what he sees will come later. That day, day one at Tri-State Crematory, he remains focused on all the work that he would have to do in the coming days and weeks. The crematory and the Marsh family's property is now a massive crime scene. The most devastating crime scene Greg, or any other GBI agent, has ever witnessed. Robin, with the EPA, leaves the scene. His involvement with the case is over. And finally, around 11 o'clock that night,

Greg goes home to his two young children and his wife. I said, you're probably not going to see me for a while. I'll probably come in at night to sleep, and that's about it. I don't know when I'll see you guys. I said, this thing is, this is going to be huge. On that first day, they find 40 bodies on the Marsh property. And word about what they've discovered is starting to get out. There's one thing that Greg dreads most. He would soon need to speak to the families of all these dead people who were supposed to have been cremated. And Greg knows as well as anyone

that this is going to tear people apart. Coming up on Noble. You couldn't wrap your head around why this, why did this happen? How can somebody have that going on there and you not know that it's going on there? I kind of slid to the floor holding the phone. I just couldn't believe it. I found a wood chipper that had bone fragments in it, what seemed to be bone fragments. And I think he was using this as a processor.

I remember when he said he was going to do it, those of us here in the community were not happy about it. We thought it was smell. Just the biggest betrayal I've ever felt in my life, not just for me, but for my husband. She was caught trying to smuggle a sword into the courtroom, disguised in a cane. I know why it happened, when it happened. I know exactly where all the bodies were. I know exactly what he did. I know everything that he did,

and I know the reasons why. To be continued... is our senior producer. Sierra Franco is our associate producer. Editing by Jason Hoke, Johnny Kaufman, and Matt Scher. Fact-checking by Kaylin Lynch. Sound design, mixing, scoring, and original music by Garrett Tiedemann.

Our theme music is La Lucha Es Una Sola by the band Esmerine. Campside Media's operations team is Doug Slaywin, David Eichler, Ashley Warren,

Destiny Dingle, and Sabina Mara. Jason Hoke is the executive producer at Waveland. The executive producers at Campside Media are Josh Dean, Vanessa Gregoriotis, Adam Hoff, and Matt Scher.