Funeral home owner jailed after 18 bodies found in various stages of decomposition, authorities say

DOUGLAS, Ga. (AP) — A funeral home owner in south Georgia has been arrested and accused of neglecting human corpses after authorities said they found 18 bodies in various stages of decomposition while serving an eviction notice at the business.

Chris Lee Johnson, 39, of Douglas, has been charged with 17 counts of abuse of a dead body, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced in a statement Monday.

The state's leading law enforcement agency began investigating over the weekend after Coffee County sheriff's deputies requested help while carrying out an eviction process.

Arrest warrants state that in multiple cases, Johnson disregarded the proper storage of bodies, which resulted in “the serious disfigurement” of the deceased people at Johnson Funeral & Cremation Services in Douglas.

The GBI has been working with family members to learn more about the deceased people involved and described it as a complex investigation. The investigation is continuing, and additional charges are expected, the agency said in a statement.

At a court appearance Monday, a judge decided Johnson would be held in jail and not released before trial due to the severity of the charges and the expectation that additional charges will be filed, court records show.

No lawyer for Johnson is listed in online court filings. Johnson indicated in court records that he did not wish to have a public defender represent him as he planned to hire his own attorney.

Johnson ran for Coffee County coroner earlier this year but was defeated in a primary in May, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Douglas is a city of nearly 12,000 residents about 200 miles (320 kilometers) southeast of Atlanta.

Elsewhere, the owners of a Colorado funeral home who were accused of cheating customers and misspending nearly $900,000 in pandemic relief funds, all while allegedly storing 190 decaying bodies in a building, pleaded guilty last week to federal fraud charges.

Jon and Carie Hallford, owners of Return to Nature Funeral Home south of Denver, each pleaded guilty Thursday to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud under a plea agreement that still has to be approved by a judge. More than 200 criminal counts are pending against them in Colorado state court, including allegations of corpse abuse.