In this episode of Pushing Up Lilies, we dive into the chilling case of Chris Lee Johnson, a 39-year-old funeral home owner from Douglas, Georgia, who has been arrested after authorities discovered 18 decomposing bodies in his care. The bodies were found during an eviction notice at his business, and the details that followed are both shocking and horrifying. What led to this gross neglect, and how did Johnson manage to conceal the disturbing truth for so long? Join me as we explore the sinister side of a trusted profession and uncover the unsettling reality behind the headlines. * Listener discretion is advised.
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0:06 Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies.
0:08 I'm your host, Julie Mattson.
0:10 Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly True Crime podcast with spine tingling, unusual and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
0:24 Do I have some stories for you?
0:26 Are you ready?
0:31 Hey, guys, I hope everyone enjoyed their Veterans Day.
0:34 Hopefully day off.
0:35 I know that the county was closed.
0:37 I was able to work from home.
0:40 It's kind of nice.
0:41 The county was good to me.
0:42 I only had one hospice in my 13-hour shift.
0:47 That's kind of unheard of.
0:48 And I find that occasionally on holidays it's slow like that.
0:53 Sometimes on Labor Day and Memorial Day we'll have drownings.
0:58 But many times if someone goes underwater and goes missing, it takes a day or two before they're found.
1:06 Typically holidays are good to us, which is nice because in this field you don't really get holidays off.
1:16 And I knew that going into even nursing, we just kind of have to be available all the time and that's part of the sacrifice, I guess that you make when you like caring for people.
1:28 Yesterday was good today.
1:30 I'm hoping for the same headed into the office.
1:34 There are four, no, wait, five of us in the office this morning.
1:40 Hopefully everyone will be nice to us.
1:44 I am about three weeks into my five-week evidence-based practice class in nurse practitioner school that's going well and boy, it's fast.
1:58 You know, these five-week classes are super quick, but I am kind of glad to see that.
2:05 I get a little bit of a break after this class and the next one doesn't start until after the beginning of the year.
2:12 I don't even know if I mentioned, but because I work for the county, they reimburse my tuition.
2:17 I get 100% if I make an A, I get 75% if I make a B and 50%.
2:25 If I make ac, that's kind of one reason why I decided to go back to school because I'm getting my money back.
2:32 Basically, they only pay for 16 hours a year, 16 semester hours a year.
2:39 I maxed out this year and took, I think 18, but classes don't start again until next year.
2:48 Next year, all of my classes will be paid for.
2:52 If you have a job that offers tuition reimbursement, I'd encourage you to do something with that.
3:00 It's free money.
3:01 I've taken advantage of it.
3:02 I have had my bachelor's degree paid for and my master's degree is being paid for, its free money being offered to me and who knows when that's going to go away.
3:14 I thought, you know, hey, I'm going to take advantage of it.
3:18 So there's that, other than that, we've had some beautiful weather here.
3:23 We had a little bit of rain at the end of last week.
3:26 Gosh, it was beautiful yesterday.
3:28 It's a shame to have to work and be stuck in a building, isn't it?
3:33 I know that many of you are stuck behind a desk and are stuck at the hospital.
3:39 Hats off to you because I know it's hard, especially now with daylight savings time, it feels like the middle of the day when I wake up and then I hate that it gets dark so early.
3:49 I just cannot get used to it.
3:51 And I don't like six o'clock walking outside and it being pitch black.
3:56 I don't know, I just can't get used to it.
3:58 But anyway, I hope everyone enjoyed their Veterans Day.
4:01 Thank you so much for all of those who serve in the military.
4:05 My stepson is in the air force and my son in law is disabled vet from the army and my dad was in the army as well.
4:17 Hats off to y'all want to talk this week about another funeral homeowner who was arrested.
4:26 We deal with funeral homes all the time in our office.
4:28 They call to ask us whose son in the death certificate if it's a case where the medical examiner took jurisdiction.
4:38 They'll ask us to call doctors for them if a family practice doctor or a specialist won't sign a death certificate.
4:49 There's just a lot of struggles that they have to deal with administratively outside of just dealing with funerals, a lot of paperwork involved.
5:00 But this story is about a Georgia funeral homeowner who was arrested on October 27th.
5:07 This is this year y'all after 18 bodies, all in various stages of decomposition, were discovered while he was being served an eviction notice.
5:19 Now they've been there for quite some time because they're decomposed.
5:24 They're in various stages.
5:25 Some of them may be early decomposition.
5:28 Some of them may be late decomposition.
5:30 They've been there a while.
5:32 Chris Johnson who's 39 years old faces 17 counts of abuse of a dead body and he was denied bail so they would not let him post bail.
5:44 He was unable to be released before his trial.
5:49 The eviction notice was served at the Johnson funeral home in Douglas Georgia on October 26th.
5:58 Again just this year.
6:01 The bodies were those of Children.
6:05 I read there was at least one child and adults, and they were found in a cooler at the facility.
6:12 Now, I don't know if the cooler was working or not.
6:16 I couldn't find anything on that.
6:18 I mean, the bodies were decomposed and they're going to decompose even in a cooler but at a much slower rate I couldn't find any information that really stated whether or not the cooler was functioning.
6:31 But the bodies were found in this cooler by investigators when this eviction notice was served.
6:39 And there was also a dog, and a cat, found in the cooler, which I found, you know, even more weird, like what's going on here.
6:47 The arrest warrant said that he knowingly and willfully defaced a dead body while the body is prepared for burial showing or cremation in a funeral establishment.
7:01 And it also stated willful negligence in his duties as a funeral home director and intentional disregard of proper storage.
7:11 And this is really, really sad.
7:13 I mean, you hate when you go to a funeral home to ask for a tour because you really don't want to go see where they do their things as a layperson.
7:21 Most people wouldn't.
7:22 But I mean, oh my gosh, it had to have smelled bad.
7:28 Even if the bodies are in a cooler, it has to smell bad.
7:32 I have a hard time thinking that he went home from work every day smelling normal.
7:39 I mean, I don't know because I doubt, I mean, he's around those bodies decomposed every day.
7:45 If he was even going to work, who knows?
7:48 You know, I'll be around one decomposed body inside a closed resonance for maybe 30 minutes to an hour.
7:56 And I smell terrible.
7:58 I can imagine being in a facility where there are 17 decomposed bodies and as his wife, I would probably question, you know, why do you smell like decomp every day?
8:09 It's not the most pleasant smell.
8:11 I'm sure my husband isn't super fond of it.
8:14 I try not to come home smelling that way.
8:17 But when you try to break it up with perfume, it's almost worse.
8:21 You know, it's like, I don't know, spraying perfume on a turd.
8:25 It just doesn't really help.
8:26 It doesn't Johnson, which is really ironic, ran for Coffee County Coroner and he was defeated by Brandon Musgrove, and he received under 29% of the votes when the election was over.
8:43 And this is before all this was discovered, but when the election was over, he said he would run again in four years.
8:51 This guy truly thought that he had a chance to be coroner and also thought that he would never get caught.
8:58 Obviously, I mean, he was like looking forward to the next four years considering running for coroner again.
9:06 You would think that if you had that plan in the back of your mind, that you would at least run your business appropriately and not disregard these bodies like this.
9:18 Ray Brent Marsh also of Georgia plead guilty of 787 counts of theft, abuse of a corpse and burial service fraud after the remains of 334 people were found at his business back in 02.
9:36 Now he was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
9:39 He was released in 2016, and he walked free from prison on that day, and he had pled guilty in 2004 to various charges.
9:53 Again, theft by deception, abusing a corpse, burial service-related fraud and giving false statements.
10:01 His crematory property was in noble Georgia, and he took a plea deal, or he probably would have been sentenced to much longer.
10:13 Now, he never really offered an explanation for his actions.
10:18 But his attorneys were saying that mercury exposure at the crematory was to blame for his actions.
10:28 I guess they did heavy metal testing on him and his medals were all over the board.
10:33 They said that an expert at the University of Kentucky said that his lab work was indicative of mercury exposure, and this is weird.
10:43 I'd never really heard this, but they believe that mercury fillings in people's teeth released a toxin during the cremation process that slowly took its toll on him, and it affected his thinking.
10:57 It's kind of crazy to think about that.
10:59 Isn't I never really thought about it.
11:00 I guess he was normally pretty clear and levelheaded.
11:04 But while he was in prison, he earned a master's and doctorate in theology.
11:09 But again, he never spoke about his crimes.
11:12 He was denied parole in 08 in 2013.
11:16 But again, he got out in 2016, but he's pretty much on probation for the rest of his life and the conditions of that probation include that he has to get a job.
11:27 That is kind of a crazy story, but that was also in Georgia.
11:32 Now again, he was at the tri state crematory, and I guess there were more than 300 bodies there that were never cremated.
11:41 And he is one that gave family members cement dust instead of their actual cremains.
11:50 But he does have to start payment on the fines and surcharges within one year of his release.
11:56 He has to handwrite a letter of apology to the next of kin or designated representative for each of the peoples whose remains were identified on his property.
12:09 He has to write a letter of apology to the public and the community and his probation officer has to have those letters in his hand within six months or had to, this was back in 2016.
12:24 He can't profit directly or indirectly from the case, but he owes the state of Georgia $8 million.
12:31 If he makes any money, guess who's going to get it, but he will also be on unsupervised probation.
12:38 Even when all of his payments are completed, he did own that crematory in Georgia.
12:46 It's kind of crazy.
12:47 I mean, you hate to think that something like this happens all the time and that's why even though I realized that funeral services and cremations can be kind of expensive, it's always good to do your research because there's another case you know, in Colorado where the funeral home pled guilty of fraud.
13:05 After 200 decomposed bodies were found at the return to Nation funeral home, John and Carry Hallford did not bury cremate bodies and gave families again urns filled with dry concrete mix instead of ashes.
13:25 They used $800,000 worth of pandemic business loans on vacations, cosmetic medical procedures and Cryptocurrency.
13:35 The conditions in that Colorado Springs business were said to be disgusting.
13:41 Unfortunately, this does happen.
13:45 I would go into the funeral home, meet the funeral director, make sure that they have a good reputation.
13:51 We have several in our area who do anyway, Johnson's license had lapsed for a short period of time and had been reinstated.
14:02 But the facility licenses which had also lapsed had not been renewed at the time that he was arrested and families, you know, who had to deal with this.
14:14 And this is the hard part because if you have a difficult time making arrangements with them and getting everything in order and then find this out.
14:25 Sometimes you want to give someone the benefit of the doubt and think maybe they're just bad at running their business, maybe they don't have enough help, whatever.
14:31 And then this happens.
14:33 But Johnson did not communicate well, he did not return calls and there were many families who had not received death certificates.
14:44 And you know, on top of all this, when the bodies are decomposed, they all have to be identified again.
14:53 They all have to be fingerprinted.
14:55 They all have to be identified by the medical examiner's office.
15:00 Sometimes when there's decomposition, you can't get good fingerprints.
15:04 Then you have to go to other things, you have to go to previous surgical procedures or previous X rays.
15:13 If they have any kind of implanted devices that have serial numbers on them or anything like that, that will help, X ray wise, to identify.
15:23 And, you know, worst case scenario, you've got to go to DNA.
15:29 This is a pain in the butt.
15:31 I mean, especially when you're talking about this many bodies.
15:34 I mean, could you imagine two or 300 I couldn't imagine.
15:38 According to Johnson's website, he conducted 36 burials or cremations in 2024.
15:47 It's not a really big town, but he remains in custody in the Tift County jail.
15:55 Now, he was being inspected by the Secretary of State's office in July, and they still kind of overlooked the fact that he wasn't in compliance because his funeral director and embalming licenses and the establishment lessons were expired.
16:13 They still gave him a passing score.
16:16 Which kind of sucks because, I mean, there's a lot of funeral homes who work their butts off to make sure that things are done the way they're supposed to be.
16:25 And this guy is basically practicing without a license.
16:30 I mean, it wouldn't be ok with me if my doctor's lessons expired, and nothing was done to him.
16:37 It's just not, I mean, as someone with a nursing license, it's not that hard.
16:42 I mean, it's not like you have to retake a test.
16:44 It's like, you mail them money.
16:46 I mean, obviously he didn't have money.
16:48 But why, because these families were paying him, he just wasn't even providing the service.
16:54 Anyway, funeral homes can be fined $1-$500 a day for operating with an expired establishment license.
17:04 And so, that's part of the reason why he owes the state of Georgia $8 million.
17:08 But his license lapsed on June the 30th of 2024 and wasn't renewed until September and again, his establishment license was still expired.
17:20 It was over two months that his funeral director and embalming license was expired.
17:25 Gosh, maybe those are things we should ask to see too.
17:28 I mean, you assume that they're not expired when you go into a funeral home that's working and did no one work for him.
17:37 I mean, was there no one else working there that could have reported what was going on and the fact that he wasn't doing his job, I don't know if he was working independently.
17:49 I mean, I would think that a funeral home would have to have several people working there and it would be hard to keep that kind of thing a secret.
17:58 But I don't know.
17:59 I find it kind of strange again, like you just don't know, there's a lot of funeral homes in the area.
18:06 I don't even know what funerals cost nowadays.
18:09 I know that our county, if you don't have the means to provide cremation or a funeral for your loved one, we have a county cremation, which is where the family gets permission from the judge to have the county pay for cremation and the family still gets the cremains.
18:29 I mean, it's basically like the county is paying for their cremation.
18:36 It's a nice service.
18:37 They don't ask anything from the family.
18:40 The county pays a local mortuary to do this for them.
18:44 And to my knowledge, they don't even really ask for proof of inability to pay.
18:51 We have a lot of family members who do this because number one, they don't have a family.
18:56 Number two, their family doesn't really care anything about them and doesn't want to help at all.
19:03 Or number three, they're estranged completely.
19:08 It's kind of sad to think that some people don't have anybody that can help, and many people have friends who try to step up.
19:15 But like if they're elderly, they just don't have extra money and, you know, churches and those kinds of things can help.
19:22 But I just don't think that, you know, nowadays, especially, I mean, we know right now the economy is kind of bad times are hard, and people can't really step up and do things.
19:33 It's usually unexpected.
19:35 It's not an expense that they really planned for.
19:38 It's not something that they've had to save for.
19:41 It is kind of nice that the county has this option.
19:45 And a lot of counties do.
19:47 I believe Dallas County does burial.
19:51 I know they used to when I worked there, they probably do cremation now, just because it's cheaper.
19:57 They used to do burial if there was no family or if they couldn't find family, you know, many times the family comes forward years later and they're upset because we haven't contacted them.
20:07 And it's like, really, you haven't seen your family member in 10 years and you're mad at us for taking care of them when you weren't there to do it.
20:14 Anyway, it's an uphill battle sometimes, but we love it, and we want to take care of.
20:22 People always said if I ever come into a lot of money, I would start some kind of program to help like proper burial or cremation.
20:30 I don't know what it would be, but it would be something that would help people that didn't have any family.
20:36 And the VA is also an option. Many times, we'll reach out and if they're a veteran, they will have VA benefits.
20:44 And the only problem with that is good luck finding their DD214 going through their stuff and who's going to do that?
20:51 I mean, we don't do that.
20:54 We will sometimes go to people's residences and search through everything to try to find family and then if family will deal with that, then that's one thing.
21:05 But if they won't, then there's another obstacle.
21:09 But anyway, I am headed to work this morning.
21:12 I just got a call.
21:13 I already have a suicide.
21:15 I'll be headed to that and hope everyone has an amazing day.
21:20 I hope the weather holds up for us.
21:23 Everyone just stay safe, and I look forward to talking to you next week.
21:27 Thanks y'all.
21:27 Bye.
21:29 Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies.
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21:43 Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at PushingUpLilies.com for merchandise and past episodes.