A grand jury has handed down a total of 66 felony indictments against former funeral director Chris Johnson, who was arrested in October after authorities serving an eviction notice discovered 18 decomposing bodies in Johnson’s Douglas, Georgia funeral home. The 66 counts include new charges involving a 2022 case of forgery for the purpose of insurance fraud.
The grand jury indictments were on hold while the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) completed the tedious task of identifying the remains and notifying the loved ones of those 18 individuals, which they accomplished earlier this month. At the same time, authorities were conducting investigations into the operations of Johnson Funeral & Cremation Services, including preneed business.
These probes uncovered the alleged incident of forgery and resulted in the arrest of a second man, James Sirmans, in December. Authorities say that Johnson changed the cause of death on the death certificate from “natural causes” to “accidental” of Sirmans’ cousin so Sirmans could collect on a $9,000 insurance policy. For his involvement, Johnson faces charges of insurance fraud, conspiracy to commit insurance fraud, forgery in the first degree, and violation of vital records registration.
The other 62 indictments against Johnson are directly related to 17 of the 18 people who were entrusted to his care in 2024. Although 18 bodies were discovered in various stages of decomposition as authorities attempted to serve Johnson with an eviction notice on October 26, 2024, only 17 met the requirements for charges of corpse abuse.
In addition to the 17 charges of dead body abuse, Johnson was indicted on 17 charges of abandonment of a dead body, and 18 counts of theft by deception. Additional indictments related to the 2024 cases involved violation of vital records registration and insurance fraud.
In many of these cases, Johnson provided families with what he represented as the cremated remains of their loved ones. In others, families found that the casket that was lowered into the ground during their loved one’s interment was empty. Several were also left in financial limbo when Johnson failed to deliver the death certificates required to complete insurance paperwork.
These families and community members are still perplexed as to how Chris Johnson was allowed to continue offering deathcare services when records show his establishment, embalming, and funeral director licenses had all lapsed by the time he passed an inspection by the Secretary of State in July. Many of the bodies that were discovered in October were most likely in the funeral home during this inspection.
Johnson has remained in custody since his initial arrest, and was even transferred to a new location out of concern for his safety. Earlier this month, Johnson’s bond was denied after multiple family members shared testimony about their loved ones’ lives and the agony of reliving their deaths. One of the deceased was a mother who was mauled to death in May 2024 while protecting her children from a pack of attacking dogs.
Other consequences of Johnson’s actions loom. The eviction notice authorities were serving at Johnson Funeral & Cremation Services on that fateful October day was a result of Johnson’s failure to pay $8,200 in back rent on one of his two commercial locations. In early December, Johnson was in court to settle these charges plus a $3,350 civil claim filed by a media company for nonpayment of advertising. Several of the 18 impacted families are also pursuing civil lawsuits.
