As more authorities arrived at Tri-State, more horrors were revealed. The Times Free Press reports that the decomposing body of a man in a suit was discovered in a wooden box, the skeleton of a baby at his feet. Outside on the grounds of the crematorium, a dilapidated hearse held the badly decomposed body of a man inside a casket. Some bodies appeared to have been dragged across the floors of various buildings on the property and left to rot.
Walker County Sheriff’s Detective Walter Hensley stated that “it was like something out of a Stephen King novel,” and verified that whenever any building was opened, more and more bodies were discovered.
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On February 19, 2002, Dr. Kris Sperry, Georgia’s chief medical examiner, told the media that 149 bodies had been discovered at that point. He talked of the discovery of about half a dozen coffins, each containing human remains. These coffins appeared to have been buried in the ground at one point and then unearthed (per The Chattanoogan).
Officials informed the public that a mobile morgue unit had been brought to the scene to help with the remains that were constantly being discovered. A team of nearly two dozen experts consisting of trained pathologists, doctors, nurses, and other professionals was dispatched with the mobile morgue unit. The same team had been on site to help identify victims at the World Trade Center in 2001.
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