Denver attorneys Mike Berg and Dave Teselle now represent more than 50 families who claim Hess and her parents victimized them. 2023 FOX News Network, LLC. When Reuters reported earlier this year about the unusual twin businesses of owner Megan Hess, federal agents raided the facility and state regulators ordered the funeral home to be shut down. The conflict of interest of having a side business in body parts just leads to problems. You are looking at how to make money.. A grand jury indictment said that from 2010 through 2018, Hess and Koch offered to cremate bodies and provide the remains to families at a cost of $1,000 or more, but many of the cremations never occurred. I didnt believe in depression until I lost my baby, Cavanagh said. The ex-employee said that she witnessed a collection of gold teeth that Hess mother allegedly extracted from the corpses fillings or crowns and that the familycashed in on the gold to pay for a trip to Disneyland in California. U.S. District Judge Christine M. Arguello on Tuesday sentenced Hess, 46, to 20 years in prison the maximum allowable for her role in a nearly decade-long scheme to sell body parts without the. The Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors and Donor Services building in Montrose, Colorado, U.S., December 16, 2017. The 20-year term was the maximum allowed under law. On July 2, Jeffersonville Police officials announced dozens of bodies were found decomposing inside a funeral home in the Southern Indiana city, just across the river from Louisville. The owners of that funeral home are facing charges of desecrating human remains more than four months after investigators found the body, which had been stored in a non-refrigerated room for years. Jacque Hampson spent a year working as Hesss personal assistant. More Reuters investigations and long-form narratives, Got a confidential news tip? Hess' mother, Shirley Koch, has also been indicted. It is illegal in the United States to sell organs such as hearts, kidneys and tendons for transplant; they must be donated. Megan Hess faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison after entering the plea Tuesday in Grand Junction, Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window), Members of the FBI, along with Montrose law enforcement investigate the Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors and Donor Services building Tuesday morning, February 6, 2018. A human head and spine sold for $850, while a full pelvis all the way to the toes priced out at $2,850. It was kind of creepy.. Im not interested. When Schum hesitated, Hess said she would waive the cremation fee if Schum agreed to donate her friend's bladder to science. Feb 4, 2023, 5:26 PM SGT. Hancock is one of many family members who has learned the cremains she was given by the owners of Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose contained items and materials that were not her husband. The Unaffiliated is our twice-weekly newsletter on Colorado politics and policy. These people deserve to know why what was done to them was done to them. Thats when E.W. The friend would then place the glass eye in an urn containing half of Dunlaps ashes and bury the urn atop the grave of Dunlaps father in Telluride, Colorado. First published on Wed 6 Jul 2022 10.36 EDT. She took orders for body parts via Hotmail, email records show. It is the only state in the country that does not license funeral home and. MILLERSVILLE, Pa. (WHTM) A Lancaster County funeral home and its director are facing formal disciplinary action and are under investigation by the state. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, 2023 FOX News Network, LLC. Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox. Though Koch dissected bodies in the back room at Sunset Mesa, they claimed that the body had to be sent out for harvesting, Eberspacher said. found out the cremains contained ashes from an infant, but also long bone fragments of an older/larger adult individual and metal, according to the suspension order. Details of Shannon Kents operations come on the heels of a Montrose funeral home that made international headlines in 2018 after an FBI raid and subsequent two-year investigation. Colorado is nicknamed the "Centennial State" because when it became the 38th state, the United States turned 100 on August 1, 1876. The back of the brochure featured the logo Donate Life, the national brand that promotes organ donation and is managed by Donate Life America, a nonprofit group. Mabry said Koch told him the glass eye couldnt be removed after Dunlaps head was severed, embalmed and shipped to researchers. Propel Funeral Partners makes acquisitions. Colorado regulators shut down the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in 2018. The FBI hired a lab to test the cremains given to the families, and they have determined the boxes of ash contain cement, sand and other non-human particles. Another alleged victim said her mothers body was desecrated. I'll never be OK.". Koch told the judge she was sorry and took responsibility for her actions. Last August, police received a complaint that funds provided to. The Lake County Sheriffs Office confirmed an active criminal investigation is underway. In another call two months later, Staci Kent responded to a death scene without a body bag, the indictment states, which led to an argument with law enforcement. According to Reuters Sunset Mesa Funeral Home had seen their call volume increase from 59 in 2015 to 128 in 2017. Both Hess and Koch originally had pleaded not guilty to the charges. Weeks passed before Hess told him that Donor Services couldnt retrieve the glass eye because the company couldnt locate the researcher who received Dunlaps head, Mabry said. "No, I did not," Hancock responded. The brochure, provided to Reuters by Hess during the 2016 interview, continued this way: Every year, organ, eye and tissue transplants provide hope to tens of thousands of people suffering from disease, injury, trauma or blindness. Hess, along with her mother and father, are all named in a lawsuit, which accuses them of using a backroom to dismember cadavers with a power saw and stack body parts in coolers. Most brokers who sell body parts offer to cremate part of the donors body for free. Staci Kent arrived to one of those death scenes without a body bag, which spurred an argument with authorities, the indictment notes. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Each edition is filled with exclusive news, analysis and other behind-the-scenes information you wont find anywhere else. Kent is already facing charges of perjury and official misconduct for sending wife Staci Kent, who is not authorized to act as a deputy coroner, to death scenes on at least three occasions, according to a September 2019 grand jury indictment. GRAND JUNCTION A Colorado funeral home operator accused of illegally selling body parts and giving clients fake ashes has pleaded guilty to mail fraud in federal court. Earlier this month, authorities from both Lake and Eagle counties encountered a strong odor of decomposition when they searched the Leadville funeral home, reads. These illegitimate businesses are buying and selling body parts just like anything off the shelf at Walmart, added Teselle. On dozens of occasions, Hess and Koch transferred bodies or body parts to third parties for research without families knowledge, according to the U.S. Justice Department. The price list is from an Arizona company shut down after an FBI raid five years ago. Colorado Funeral Homes. I went through a very bad crisis losing the baby, Cavanagh said. Further, the van was holding two other bodies that needed to be removed.. But two said Hess sometimes bragged about how lucrative it was to sell bodies and body parts. The Colorado Office of Funeral Home and Crematory Registration has no employees dedicated solely to it and an annual budget of less than $85,000. On her cremation marketing website, a donor could simply select from a drop-down menu, fill out a few forms, click Add to Cart, and enter a credit card number. It is unbelievable, said Dave Teselle, a Denver-based attorney who represents Hancock and more than five dozen other families in a claim against the owners of Sunset Mesa and the companies who are accused of buying the body parts. And much like E.W. Funeral homes in Leadville and Gypsum are under criminal investigation after authorities this month found an unrefrigerated body, bags of unlabeled cremains, an abandoned stillborn infant and at least one instance in which a family received cremains for their stillborn child mixed with bits of adult body parts and metal fragments. By: Tony Kovaleski Posted at 6:00 PM, Oct 31, 2019 A Colorado funeral home operator accused of illegally selling body parts and giving clients fake ashes has been sentenced to 20 years in prison By The Associated Press January 4, 2023, 12:16 AM Officials also found the "post-cremation remains" of 16 people, according . At Sunset Mesa, Hess charged $1,995 for a simple burial and $695 for a basic cremation, according to price lists reviewed by Reuters. According to the Johnstown, N.Y. Police Department, Brian M. Barnett, 35, who owns the since-shuttered Ehle . The confrontation escalated when Shannon Kent allegedly called Lake County Sheriff Amy Reyes and threatened her with arrest for questioning his wifes decision not to use the body bag, prosecutors said. The state's Department of Regulatory Agencies. Hiring funeral directors: Do you look for IQ or EQ? She said she and her mother, Koch, handled about 10 cadavers a month in the back room. Staci Kent, however, wouldnt let them see the baby, Reh said. In Colorado and most other states, it also is legal for funeral homes to sell items recovered from dead bodies, such as gold dental work. It can't be fixed, said Hancock. Finally, after a month, she got Staci Kent on the phone and laid into her, asking why she hadnt heard anything about her sons cremains. some timely learning opportunities for our readers, Dont forget Low-tech to build your brand. Reuters could not independently verify this figure. The scope of Sunset Mesa Funeral Home and Donor Services remains unclear at this time while investigators are trying to get a handle on that issue. The Colorado Sun is a journalist-owned, award-winning news outlet based in Denver that strives to cover all of Colorado so that our state our community can better understand itself. Thousands more patients could benefit from life saving and healing eye and tissue donations.. Body brokers like Donor Services are also known as non-transplant tissue banks. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. DALLAS The Texas Funeral Service Commission says it has opened an investigation into allegations of the mishandling of corpses at one of the most high-profile mortuaries in the state. A former Colorado funeral home owner has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison on charges of fraud and selling body parts without permission. A few days later, she was able to pick up the cremains, but like E.W., Cavanagh received no paperwork. Connie Hansons sons body parts were also allegedly sold. In February 2018, Lina Cavanagh lost her baby at an advanced stage of pregnancy a loss that took its toll on her, both physically and emotionally. Part 8: Former workers describe troubling practices at this mortuary-body broker, including allegations of deceptive marketing and an account of how gold dental work was removed from corpses and sold. Megan Hess, 46, pleaded guilty to fraud in July 2022 after a 2018 investigation that exposed her for selling parts of dead bodies that were brought to the funeral home for cremation. Hansons box included wires and what appear to be old batteries. I see his body parts floating in space and I keep trying to grab them and put him back and I can't! Megan Hess, the owner of Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose, and her parents are now under investigation by the FBI. pleaded guilty to fraud in July after a . parents are now under investigation by the FBI. Like many, Hanson found out about her son Frederick during a phone call from an FBI agent. Body brokering is not illegal in Colorado; however, a 2020 Denver7 report noted that Hess, along with her mother, were donating bodies without the consent of the deceased's family. Body brokers sometimes market their services using language that could mislead prospective donors into believing the broker handles organ donations. N.Y. Since that time, according to the article, Reuters has not been able to find another business in the United States that operates a funeral home, crematory, and body broker business in the same location and operated by the same owner. The Bailey-Kent Funeral Home was the only option given to her for cremation under a certain weight, she said. A woman in Colorado has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for illegally selling body parts. Legal Statement. The Denver attorney is referring to the limited and nonexistent regulation nationwide and worldwide regarding the procurement and selling of bodies and body parts. The article also tells about how Sunset Mesa Funeral Home handled some services free of charge. SCI 4Q Revenue and Year End Revenue lower than comparables, Funeral Director Daily, The business of Funeral Care. The legislation has support from the state's largest trade association for funeral homes, the Colorado Funeral Directors Association. "Our sweet mother, they dismembered her," Erin Smith said, selling her shoulders, knees and feet for profit. Both Reh and Cavanagh said they want to get the ashes analyzed at the University of Colorado to see if they actually belong to their babies. It only investigates a funeral home if a complaint is filed, he said. There are no ethics there when you do that. Hoping to get answers, Denver7 visited Hess home in Montrose. Instead, the media was interested in the dark history behind the town's funeral home, Sunset Mesa. are acquisitions larger in general? Why Donor Services was unable to trace Dunlaps head remains unclear.