Inset: Funeral home owner Chris Johnson (Coffee County Sheriff’s Office). Background: The Johnson Funeral Home in Douglas, Georgia (WALB/YouTube).
Two individuals have been taken into custody following the unveiling of 18 decaying bodies at a funeral home in Georgia. The proprietor stands accused of mistreating deceased bodies and engaging in insurance fraud. Moreover, an alleged collaborator faces charges for adjusting the cause of death on a death certificate to receive additional life insurance benefits. The investigation revealed these shocking details.
Chris Johnson, aged 39, and James Sirmans, aged 52, were arrested and charged on Sunday with insurance fraud and conspiracy to commit insurance fraud, more than a month after the corpses were discovered at the Johnson Funeral Home in Coffee County. Although Johnson was initially apprehended on October 27 solely on 17 counts of abusing a dead body, new charges of insurance fraud were later pressed against him. Sirmans was taken into custody Sunday after an examination by the state’s Office of the Commissioner of Insurance.
Johnson and Sirmans are accused of altering the cause of death for at least one person in 2022, which led to higher insurance payouts.
Besides the fresh insurance fraud accusations, Johnson is accused of theft by deception, forgery, and presenting false vital records related to the purported fraudulent scheme. Additionally, he faces charges of theft by taking and multiple violations of vital records registration in connection to the ongoing investigation into the bodies found at his funeral home. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation officials disclosed these troubling developments.
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“With the assistance of the Ben Hill County Sheriff’s Office, Sirmans was taken into custody without incident and booked into the Coffee County Jail,” the bureau said in a Sunday press release. “He has since been released on bond.”
According to local reports, the families of at least 16 bodies found at Johnson Funeral Home who have been identified have been demanding answers about what happened to their loved ones, as have others who’ve used Johnson’s services in the past.
Local ABC affiliate WALB reported in November that Johnson’s website for his funeral home listed 36 burials or cremations conducted for individuals in 2024. Half of the 18 bodies found at the property were from this year, according to the station.
Some of Johnson’s clients were originally given ashes, while others were told their family members had been buried in plots that they purchased.
“I can’t have peace of mind because I don’t know what’s in that coffin,” said one of the bereaved, Janell Kirkland, in an interview with WALB. She reportedly paid Johnson over $10,000 to bury her son in 2023 at a local cemetery, which he allegedly never did.
On top of that, Kirkland wasn’t allowed to see her child on account of Johnson forcing her to do a closed casket service, which she thought was necessary.
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“He wasn’t viewable is what I got told,” Kirkland said. “And I believed that because [her son spent] several days of being alone in a home before he was found.”
Authorities say they are still working to identify the remaining two bodies that were discovered at Johnson’s funeral home. Since they also found the corpses of two deceased pets — a dog and a cat — investigators are trying to confirm whether the bodies are “human remains.”
