Court sentences funeral home operators for illegally selling body parts in Colorado

According to the US Attorney's Office, two funeral home owners in Colorado were convicted on Wednesday for selling bodies and body parts illegally without the families' permission.

According to federal authorities, Megan Hess received a 20-year prison term while her mother Shirley Koch received a 15-year sentence for their roles in the plot to sell the human remains to body broker services. To one count of mail fraud and aiding and abetting, they each entered guilty pleas.

"These two women preyed on vulnerable victims who turned to them in a time of grief and sadness. But instead of offering guidance, these greedy women betrayed the trust of hundreds of victims and mutilated their loved ones," Leonard Carollo, the acting special agent in charge at the FBI in Denver, said in a news release.

"Without knowledge or consent, the women disrespected the wishes of the grieving victims and degraded the bodies of their family members to sell them for profit," Carollo said.

In Montrose, Colorado, the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home was run by women. According to the plea deal, they would meet with anyone looking for cremation services between 2010 and 2018 for both themselves and their loved ones.

"In many instances, Koch and Hess neither discussed nor obtained authorization for the donation of decedents' bodies or body parts for body broker services," the news release said. "In other instances, the topic of a donation was raised by Hess or Koch, and specifically rejected by the families. In such circumstances, despite lacking any authorization, Koch and Hess recovered body parts from, or otherwise prepared entire bodies of hundreds of decedents for body broker services."

Hess and Koch occasionally sold the remains in excess of what the family had approved, the news statement stated, even when families agreed to gift.

According to the news release, the two women also provided cremated remains to families that did not belong to the families' loved ones.

After certifying to customers that the remains were clear of contagious diseases including Hepatitis B and C and HIV, the duo occasionally shipped bodies and body parts that tested positive for or belonged to people who had died from such ailments.

According to the news release, the shipments were sent over the mail or on commercial flights in contravention of the Department of Transfer's guidelines for the transportation of hazardous chemicals.

"The defendants' conduct was horrific and morbid and driven by greed, US Attorney Cole Finegan said. "They took advantage of numerous victims who were at their lowest point given the recent loss of a loved one. We hope these prison sentences will bring the victim's family members some amount of peace as they move forward in the grieving process."

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