Inset: Funeral home owner Chris Johnson (Coffee County Sheriff’s Office). Background: The Johnson Funeral Home in Douglas, Georgia (WALB/YouTube).
Two arrests have been made in connection to the discovery of 18 decomposing corpses at a funeral home in Georgia, with its owner being busted for allegedly abusing dead bodies and insurance fraud — along with an alleged accomplice — for altering the cause of death on a death certificate to obtain “additional life insurance proceeds,” according to investigators.
Chris Johnson, 39, and James Sirmans, 52, were each charged Sunday with two counts of insurance fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit insurance fraud over a month after the bodies were found at the Johnson Funeral Home in Coffee County. Authorities arrested Johnson on Oct. 27 but initially only charged him with 17 counts of abuse of a dead body, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Sirmans was arrested Sunday following a probe 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.
In addition to the new insurance allegations, Johnson also got hit with charges of theft by deception, forgery and submitting fraudulent vital records in connection to the alleged fraud scheme. Authorities also charged him with theft by taking and six counts of violation of vital records registration in relation to the “ongoing investigation” into the remains found in his funeral home and “related business practices,” according to GBI officials.
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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.”
“The GBI continues its work to identify the other 2 remains that were found and expects this to occur soon,” officials said Sunday. “The GBI also continues its work to verify the cremation information and whether cremains were sent to the correct families, as well as other investigative leads.”
