Did Mercury Make Him Do It?

You may remember a story several years ago about the operator of a crematory in Georgia who left hundreds of dead bodies in piles on his property and then substituted cement dust as their cremains.

The operator, Ray Brent Marsh, plead guilty and is in the process of serving a 12-year prison term for theft, corpse abuse, fraud, and other charges.

Marsh’s lawyer is now claiming that mercury (the mineral, not the planet or the automobile) triggered the aberrant behavior.  On the other hand, the prosecutor thinks the claim is a publicity stunt designed to get Marsh parole because Marsh was attending college and serving on the board of tax equalization at the same time he was stacking bodies.

See Georgia crematory crimes blamed on mercury, CNN.com, Feb. 7, 2007.