Wednesday afternoon, a Superior Court judge denied bond for Chris Johnson, former owner of Johnson Funeral & Cremation Services, who was arrested in October after 18 decomposing bodies were found while officers served an eviction notice at the funeral home. Johnson has been incarcerated since his arrest.
Agents from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and officers from the Coffee County Sheriff’s Office have been investigating the incident since the bodies were found. Johnson has had at least two bond hearings scheduled since his arrest; however, all were continued until agents identified all the bodies and notified next of kin. Monday, agents identified the final two bodies.
During the hearing, GBI agent Marina Thrift and family members of the deceased testified. Johnson was in the courtroom but did not take the stand.
Few details regarding the investigation have been released. Johnson was in the process of moving his funeral home from Highway 441 South to a location on North Madison Avenue. He had not been paying rent on the 441 location, hence the eviction notice, but he was also behind on his rent at the Madison Avenue location. In December, a magistrate judge ruled that Johnson owed the landlord from the Madison Avenue building $8,200 in back rent and miscellaneous costs/fees.
Testimony from the bond hearing paints a macabre picture of the funeral home and what Johnson may have had planned for the new location. Agent Thrift described the smell inside the funeral home as “overwhelming.” Bodies were stored in several different locations inside the building. One was on a table. Some were in body bags. One was on the floor on a sheet. Another was tied to a table and two were stacked on top of each other. The body that had been in the funeral home the longest was brought in on January 24, 2024. The most recent body had come in on October 6, 2024. There were two infants; otherwise, the age range of the deceased was 30-83.
One of the biggest stories swirling around regarding the new location was the alleged presence of a large hole in the floor, presumably where Johnson may have intended to place the bodies once he moved in. While no one outright stated that Johnson intended to put bodies in the hole, the hole was 10 feet by six feet and there were tools present, including a jackhammer.
As family members testified, they painted a picture of poor customer service, no filing of death certificates, substances given to families as cremains that were not human ashes, and, in some cases, no cremains given to families at all. In total, investigators examined 34 cremains – 19 were human, seven were unlikely human, and eight were not human. (Investigators cannot tell if the cremains belong to the person they are labeled as; they can only tell if the cremains are human.)
Then there is the matter regarding the case of Jesse Williams, who passed away on July 29, 2022. Williams passed away after a battle with cancer and a cousin, James Sirmans, had taken an insurance policy on Williams. When Williams passed, Johnson allegedly stated that Sirmans could receive $9,000 if his death was an accident and not cancer. Johnson and Sirmans stand accused of altering the cause of death on Williams’s certificate to blunt force trauma due to a bicycle accident. Charges related to the alleged forgery were added to Johnson’s growing list of charges. Sirmans was charged with two counts of insurance fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit a felony. He was arrested and released on bond. Sirmans was not in the courtroom Wednesday.
All of the family members of the deceased who testified asked that Johnson remain in custody. Johnson’s attorney stated that Johnson is not a flight risk, wouldn’t commit any further felonies, was cooperative with investigators, and otherwise met the conditions for bond.
“I’ve thought about it. I’ve prayed about it. I feel sorry for his family and he needs to be with his children. But the more I thought about it, if he’s let out, someone will kill him. He needs to pay for what he did,” said Maude Smith, whose husband of 47 years was among the deceased.
District Attorney Marilyn Bennett stated that the body that had been in the funeral home the longest had been there for 276 days. The shortest amount of time a body for which Johnson was charged had been there for 76 days. “Some of these bodies were on the floor like meat,” she said.
At the end of the hearing, Johnson was denied bond and will remain in jail. He is charged with 17 counts of abusing a dead body, seven counts of submitting fraudulent vital records, two counts of insurance fraud, and one count each of theft by deception, theft by taking, forgery, and conspiracy to commit insurance fraud. If convicted on all counts, Johnson is facing over 100 years in prison.
Ashleyn Adams of Coffee County Broadcasters/DouglasNow contributed to this report.