Noble doesn't even seem to be a town, just an area in Walker County, Georgia, between the towns of Lafayette and Rock Spring.

It's a rural area just south of the border with Tennessee and just east of Alabama, hence the name of the business being tri-state crematory.

The business was on a 16-acre, six-and-a-half hectare piece of land, and the business had a post-office

box in Rock Spring, while the owner had a post-office box in Lafayette.

Gerald Cook drove a delivery truck in the area, and in October of 2000, he was on his way to fill

the propane tank of that very crematory.

That propane was what powered the furnace where bodies were turned to ash, or at least they

were supposed to be.

As Gerald walked around the property in search of the propane tank, he found a pile of

debris and upon closer inspection, he realized that human bones and body parts

were mixed in with the wood and leaves. Suddenly, the operator of the crematory Brent Marsh

appeared and called out to the gas man. Gerald asked him where the propane tank was,

and Brent pointed him in the right direction. Gerald pretended that he had noticed

the human remains and filled the tank like nothing was wrong. After driving around in a daze for a bit,

Gerald pulled himself together and told his boss about what he had seen. His boss went to the

sheriff's office in Lafayette and explained what his employee had seen.

Walker County Sheriff Steve Wilson listened to the story and didn't immediately think he was dealing with the crime.

He assumed the business had gotten backed up and, at the worst, he might have been storing bodies in properly.

He looked for a place where he could report the crematory, but couldn't

find anywhere that regulated cremation, so he sent a couple of deputies to the property, and they

reported that they didn't find anything incriminating. The story was shrugged off then, but only a few

years later, the true horror of what was happening at the tri-state crematory would come

...