Story highlights Autopsy shock: Teen's organs removed, cavity filled with newspaper 
 
 "We thought we were burying Kendrick, not half of Kendrick," father says 
 
 Kendrick Johnson was found dead in a rolled-up gym mat in January 
 
 His death was ruled accidental; a private autopsy challenged that finding 
 
 The death of 17-year-old Kendrick Johnson was awful enough for his parents. Then came the doubts about investigators' conclusion that it was an accident. 
 
 But the discovery that their son's body and skull had been stuffed with newspaper before burial added a horrific new dimension to their anguish and further fueled their skepticism of the official findings. 
 
 "We have been let down again," his father, Kenneth Johnson, told CNN. "When we buried Kendrick, we thought we were burying Kendrick, not half of Kendrick." 
 
 Kendrick Johnson was found dead in a gym at Lowndes County High School in January. State medical examiners concluded that the three-sport athlete suffocated after getting stuck in a rolled-up gym mat while reaching for a sneaker. 
 
 Death was not accidental, family's autopsy finds 
 
 His parents, Kenneth and Jacquelyn Johnson, never have bought that explanation. They won a court order to have their son's body exhumed and a second autopsy performed in June. 
 
 During an autopsy, internal organs are removed and examined before being returned for burial. But when Dr. Bill Anderson, the private pathologist who conducted the second autopsy, opened up the teen's remains, the brain, heart, lungs, liver and other viscera were missing. Every organ from the pelvis to the skull was gone. 
 
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 "I'm not sure at this point who did not return the organs to the body," Anderson said. "But I know when we got the body, the organs were not there." 
 
 Two entities had custody of Kendrick Johnson's body after his death -- the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which conducted the first autopsy in January; and the Harrington Funeral Home in Valdosta, which handled the teen's embalming and burial. 
 
 GBI spokeswoman Sherry Lang told CNN that after the autopsy, "the organs were placed in Johnson's body, the body was closed, then the body was released to the funeral home." That's normal practice, Lang said. 
 
 The funeral home would not comment to CNN. But in a letter to the Johnsons' attorney, funeral home owner Antonio Harrington said his firm never received the teen's organs. Harrington wrote that the organs "were destroyed through natural process" due to the position of Kendrick Johnson's body when he died, and "discarded by the prosector before the body was sent back to Valdosta." A prosector dissects the body for pathological examination. 
 
 Scene points to foul play 
 
 Stuffing a body with old newsprint and department-store circulars -- "like he was a garbage can," as Jacquelyn Johnson put it -- isn't exactly standard practice in forensic pathology or the mortician's trade. Vernie Fountain, the founder of a Missouri embalming school, called it "not consistent with the standards of care" in the industry. And Dr. Gregory Schmunk, the president of the National Association of Medical Examiners, told CNN, "I have never heard of this practice." 
 
 Organs are typically placed in plastic bag, which is then put back into the body cavity after an autopsy, Schmunk told CNN in an e-mail. While individual organs may be kept back for further testing, he wrote, "This would not amount to all of the organs in any circumstance that I can imagine." 
 
 Funeral homes are licensed by the Georgia Secretary of State's office, which has opened an investigation into how Johnson's body was treated, said Jared Thomas, a spokesman for the agency. 
 
 Anderson, who was hired by the Johnson family for a second autopsy, found Kendrick Johnson had sustained a blow to the right side of his neck that was "consistent with inflicted injury." Challenging the state autopsy's finding of positional asphyxiation, he concluded the teen died as the result of "unexplained, apparent non-accidental, blunt force trauma." 
 
 And death scene imagery obtained exclusively by CNN has led a former FBI agent to question how Johnson died: "I think this young man met with foul play," said Harold Copus, now an Atlanta private investigator. 
 
 Lowndes County Sheriff Chris Prine refused to discuss the matter with CNN, calling Johnson's death a closed case. The U.S. Justice Department announced in September that it wouldn't open a civil rights investigation into the case. 
 
 But federal prosecutors in south Georgia have met with the family's representatives and are weighing whether to open their own probe, said Michael Moore, the U.S. attorney whose district includes Valdosta. 
 
 "This is about getting to the facts and the truth, and we want the Johnson family and the community of Valdosta to have confidence in the process," Moore said. "I am cognizant of time, and we continue to move the process along." 
 
 Moore urged anyone with information about Johnson's death to contact his office. Johnson's parents have come to believe their son's death was no accident, and the macabre discovery about their son's body has only deepened that belief. 
 
 "It's unbearable, just about," Jacquelyn Johnson said. "The only thing that wakes you up in the morning is to just keep pushing." ||||| Story highlights "This is a murder-mystery and we're going to get to the bottom of it," says attorney 
 
 Johnson's father: "We're happy that a fresh pair of eyes is starting to look" 
 
 U.S. Attorney Michael Moore announces "formal review" of case 
 
 Johnson's family believe he was murdered; authorities say the death was accidental 
 
 Nearly 10 months after their son died, the parents of Kendrick Johnson are finally getting what they've been asking for: another investigation into the teen's mysterious death in the gym of Lowndes High School in Valdosta, Georgia. 
 
 Michael Moore, the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia, said Thursday that federal authorities will investigate the circumstances behind the death of Johnson, whose bloody body was found inside a rolled-up gym mat on January 11. 
 
 Johnson's family suspects the 17-year-old was murdered and that someone has tried to cover up evidence in the case. 
 
 While warning his jurisdiction is limited as a federal prosecutor, Moore said that after lengthy review of evidence collected by authorities and the family's own investigator that "sufficient basis exists" to warrant a formal review of the facts. 
 
 Should evidence gathered in the investigation warrant criminal or civil rights charges, he said he would recommend them. 
 
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 "I will follow the facts wherever they lead. My objective is to discover the truth," he said. 
 
 In addition to suspicions of a coverup, the family's lawyer has also raised civil rights concerns, questioning whether officials in the predominantly white county took the investigation of an African-American teenager's death seriously enough. Authorities say they did. 
 
 "We're happy that a fresh pair of eyes is starting to look at Kendrick's case," Kendrick's father, Kenneth Johnson, told CNN's Jake Tapper on Thursday. "We're just waiting on the truth to really come out." 
 
 CNN legal analyst Sunny Hostin called the announcement "a significant development for this family and this case." 
 
 "Now you have the resources of the federal government, in particular the FBI," she told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "With that type of resources directed at this investigation, there will be more answers to be found." 
 
 The announcement comes a day after a judge granted the family and CNN access to surveillance images and investigative files related to the case, which the Lowndes County sheriff's office had declared accidental. 
 
 CNN has been reporting on the case for months, uncovering new details of the teen's death and raising questions about the sheriff's office handling of the case. 
 
 Among other things, CNN obtained death-scene images that led outside exerts to question the official explanation that Kendrick had suffocated reaching for a sneaker. 
 
 "His parents never accepted this explanation that he climbed into a wrestling mat got stuck and died. It flew in the face of all common sense," Benjamin Crump, a family attorney, told CNN's Tapper. 
 
 "This is a murder-mystery and we're going to get to the bottom of it," he said. 
 
 A mysterious death 
 
 Authorities found Kendrick's body on January 11, wedged into a rolled-up wrestling mat in the high school gym. 
 
 Imagery obtained by CNN -- a 15-minute video and nearly 700 photos taken by sheriff's investigators -- show his body clad in jeans and layered orange and white T-shirts. 
 
 His face was bloated with pooled blood, some of which had poured out of his body, soaking his dreadlocks and spilling onto the floor. 
 
 Within 24 hours of finding the body, Lowndes County Sheriff Chris Prine announced that investigators had no reason to suspect foul play in the death. 
 
 On Thursday, Prine's attorney said that the sheriff welcomes Moore's decision to review the case, and will continue to cooperate "in every way." 
 
 "We appreciate Mr. Moore's interest in these tragic circumstances and applaud his urging of the community to come forward with facts and evidence rather than feelings or opinions, no matter how sincere they may be," said attorney James Elliott. 
 
 "While Sheriff Prine has every confidence that his office's investigation was handled with the necessary diligence to assure that all leads were examined and exhausted, he welcomes the U. S. Attorney's further review of the case," the attorney said. 
 
 But a former FBI agent contacted by CNN to review the materials questioned those conclusions. 
 
 Harold Copus, now a private investigator, questioned how authorities handled evidence in the case, including blood smears found on a nearby wall they said were unrelated to the case. 
 
 Copus also questioned the handling of a pair of gym shoes that had a substance that appeared to be blood on them. 
 
 Investigators told CNN the shoes weren't collected as evidence because the substance was not blood. 
 
 Despite the findings of state medical examiners who found no evidence of foul play, a private pathologist hired by the family to conduct a second autopsy after exhuming the teen's body found that Johnson had a blow to the right side of his neck "consistent with inflicted injury." 
 
 The pathologist also discovered that the teen's organs had not been returned to his body after the initial autopsy. It had instead been stuffed with newspapers. 
 
 The absence of the organs fueled the family's suspicions of a coverup in their son's death. 
 
 "They know something happened in that gym, and they don't want it to come out," Kenneth Johnson said at the time. 
 
 Brick walls 
 
 For months, the family's quest for answers went nowhere. It took until May for autopsy results to be issued, and then the sheriff's office said the investigation had been closed. 
 
 The sheriff's office and school officials resisted the family's request to obtain school surveillance images and other records, citing state law that exempts the release of "education records of a minor child." 
 
 After months of pursuing official answers and getting nowhere, they began staging daily rallies. 
 
 A Facebook tribute page and a CNN iReport submitted by Kendrick's aunt spread the message far beyond the southeast Georgia town. 
 
 On Monday, a Lowndes County judge ruled that authorities had to turn over the surveillance records and files sought by the family -- the first step, family attorney Chevene King said -- in finding what they say is the truth about what had happened. 
 
 Video included in the release and reviewed by CNN shows him walking in a hallway and entering the gym. 
 
 It also shows him inside the gym prior to his death, along with other students playing basketball. 
 
 There is no indication that any of the people shown in the video have any knowledge of the events surrounding Kendrick's death. 
 
 A civil rights case? 
 
 King has alleged that if Kendrick had been white, the investigation would have gone differently. He doesn't believe race tells the whole story though. 
 
 "You have to consider race as a factor, but I don't think that that's the end-all in terms of trying to understand why this case was handled in the way that it was," he said Thursday. 
 
 "We believe that, certainly, if there is a coverup it is a coverup for somebody, and not a nobody," he said. 
 
 Prine, the sheriff, is white, as are about 60% of the county's residents. However, sheriff's office officials have rejected the claim that race influenced the case. 
 
 "Race never played into it," Stryde Jones of the Lowndes County Sheriff's Office said in May. "The victim played into it. That's who we're working for is the victim and the victim's family." 
 
 King said none of the materials released Monday are expected to show exactly what happened to Kendrick. 
 
 But they could cast doubt on the official explanation and nudge officials toward reclassifying Kendrick's death to allow a new investigation into what happened, King said. 
 
 "Essentially, it shifts the focus from what the sheriff had offered to other theories that were not explored and that have I think begun to slowly creep to the surface," King said after the hearing. 
 
 On Thursday, Lowndes County Coronor Bill Watson said he has not made a decision yet on whether to open a coroner's inquest into the death. That would be the first step in reclassifying the death to something other than accidental to allow a fresh investigation into the circumstances. 
 
 Watson said he would make that decision in "the next day or so." 
 
 "And I'm emphasizing the 'or so'," he said. 
 
 Regardless of what happens, Kenneth Johnson said Thursday the family has no choice but to keep pressing on. 
 
 "We're fighting for Kendrick to the end," he said.
– The plot has again thickened in the mysterious death of Georgia teen Kendrick Johnson: A second autopsy on the 17-year-old's exhumed body has found that before burial almost all of his organs were replaced with newspaper. Kendrick was found dead in a rolled-up wrestling mat at his school in January, in what was originally ruled an accidental asphyxiation. But his parents were suspicious and had him exhumed and examined by a private doctor. That doctor found evidence of "non-accidental" trauma, and now reveals that every organ from Kendrick's pelvis to skull—including his brain, lungs, heart, and liver—is missing, CNN reports. Newspapers were stuffed into the cavities the organs should have occupied "like he was a garbage can," his mother says. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which conducted the first autopsy, says it put all the organs back in afterward. But the funeral home that embalmed Kendrick tells the family's attorney that before it got the body the organs "were destroyed through natural process," and then "discarded by the prosecutor." The county sheriff, meanwhile, says the death is a closed case and refuses to discuss it. Yesterday, CNN revealed photos and video from the scene of Kendrick's death that raise serious questions about investigators' work, showing among other things blood stains on the wall that weren't investigated. "They know something happened in that gym," Kendrick's father says, "and they don't want it to come out." Click for more on the case.