The Marsh family hires a lawyer with a history of representing town weirdos. And an expert examines the crematory furnace.
This podcast contains graphic descriptions of death and decay.
Please listen with care.
McCracken, Poston, maybe the best lawyer in Northwest Georgia, grew up in the 1960s in the tiny town of Graysville, with a cemetery next to his house.
There were graves there for Confederate soldiers and for old friends of McCracken's family.
It was our playground.
When we were kids, we would lay down on the graves.
And when Halloween kids would come by, we would jump up from the graves.
We were never afraid of the place.
And one tombstone was shaped like a lectern.
So we would play, you know, politician or a preacher there and have everybody else sit out and listen to the preaching.
One day when he was five years old, McCracken went missing.
The whole family was searching for him and they found him at the cemetery attending a funeral.
He dressed himself up and everything.
For the better part of a decade, he'd attend every funeral, whether he knew the person or not.
And graceful.
You have to understand there was not a lot going on, an event like a funeral that was big in the town, that and the Easter sunrise service.
And my job became, after an embarrassing incident when one of the neighborhood dogs was in heat, my job became to put up all the dogs before the Easter sunrise service.
And then that extended to put up all the dogs before the funerals because you didn't want a bunch of dogs lining up and making out while some.
While you're trying to eulogize somebody.
Graysville was in the segregated south, sitting just below the Tennessee border.