As police scour the crematory property, hundreds of family members who sent bodies to be burned learn that they’ve been deceived, setting off a panic.
This podcast contains graphic descriptions of death and decay.
Please listen with care.
Sheila Manus came to know death at a young age.
She was born in Murray county in northwest Georgia, and she was the youngest in her family.
So she was spoiled as a kid, but she had to grow up fast.
My mother died when I was 15.
She had a heart attack three years later.
My dad drowned.
I was 18.
The thing of it is, I'd been raised that, you know, you don't just lay in wall or you move on, pick up, make the best of it.
Sheila and her brother got jobs and bought a house together.
She was 17 when she had her first daughter.
I was going to raise her.
I didn't need a man.
That's the way I was raised.
Independent.
Death shapes us all.
It brings families together or rips them apart.
Death can rob you of stability or grant you new freedom.
For Sheila, the deaths of her parents intensified her independence, but also made it protective, loyal.