“A third site of dumped bodies was discovered near a crematory where hundreds of corpses have been found, a medical examiner said at a news conference before he was interrupted by a newly imposed gag order,” The Washington Post Reported Friday.

Walker County District Attorney Buzz Franklin rushed into the news conference Thursday to distribute copies of the gag order just as Georgia state medical examiner Dr. Kris Sperry was talking about the discovery of more corpses at Tri-State Crematory.

The order, obtained by defense attorney Ken Poston, covers virtually everyone involved in the case, including witnesses, officials and investigators.

Before the order was delivered, Sperry said 283 bodies had been retrieved, and 54 of those had been identified. He was cut off before he had an opportunity to elaborate on the third site.

[…] The operation to recover human remains from pits, sheds, metal vaults and even a shallow lake near the crematory could take at least eight months, officials said.

Investigators said they plan to drain the lake, where they have already found a skull and a torso, as soon as the rest of the 16-acre site has been searched.

“We’ve got to make sure there aren’t any bodies (buried) downstream of the lake before we dump 100,000 gallons of water out,” McConnell said.

Georgia legislators who toured the crematory grounds Thursday said the scene was worse than they imagined.

‘We saw the pits, we saw the bodies removed. It’s indescribable,’ said Rep. Barbara Massey Reece of nearby Chattooga County.

Rep. Chuck Sims, a funeral director, said he cannot fathom how someone could treat dead bodies with such disrespect.

‘These people probably all died of natural causes, but now it’s almost like a trauma death,’ Sims said. ‘It’s almost like they’ve been violated.’

The more we learn about the details of this case, the more obvious it becomes — to me (gulp) at least — that a “Gag” order is, well, redundant…

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