Colorado funeral home owner accused of stealing body parts pleads guilty

A Colorado funeral dwelling operator who was accused of promoting and stealing physique elements pleaded responsible to mail fraud on Tuesday, the US justice division stated.

Megan Hess, 45, who operated the funeral dwelling in Montrose along with her mom, faces a 20-year jail sentence after the choice in US district courtroom in Grand Junction, Colorado.

For eight years, by way of 2018, Hess executed a scheme to steal a whole bunch of our bodies or physique elements, which she would then promote to different establishments for medical or instructional functions, prosecutors stated.

Hess, prosecutors stated, would typically switch the human stays to 3rd events with out familial consent, and would ship our bodies that belonged to individuals who died from infectious illnesses.

She ran Sundown Mesa Funeral Basis, which organized cremations, funerals and burial, and operated Donor Service, a body-broker service.

In some circumstances, Hess and her mom, Shirley Koch, have been accused of giving households the cremated stays of one other particular person, pretending to be returning their relative’s ashes. Different households have been charged $1,000 or extra for a cremation that by no means occurred.

Hess is anticipated to be sentenced in January. Koch has a change of plea listening to set for 12 July, and has pleaded not responsible.

Some households had agreed to donate or to present small samples, corresponding to tumors or parts of pores and skin, for testing or analysis, in keeping with the indictment, filed in 2020. Nevertheless, “physique elements past these which have been licensed, if not total our bodies, could be offered,” the indictment reads.

“In every of those cases, the households wouldn’t have licensed donation had they been knowledgeable of what would truly be carried out with their liked one’s stays.”

A Reuters investigation in 2018 heard from former workers who recounted that Koch would pull tooth from a few of the corpses to extract the gold in crowns or fillings.

It additionally detailed how Hess charged households $195 to donate their our bodies, plus $300 extra if kinfolk needed their family members’ cremated stays returned.