In at least dozens of instances, Hess and Koch did not follow family wishes, and neither discussed nor obtained authorization for Donor Services to transfer decedents' bodies or . On Oct. 2, the Lake and Eagle county sheriffs departments executed a search warrant at the Bailey-Kent Funeral Home in Leadville, where deputies encountered a strong odor of decomposition, according to an Oct. 13 summary suspension issued by the states Office of Funeral Home and Crematory Registration, before finding: In addition to the Leadville funeral home, the state issued suspension orders for the Kent Funeral Home Gypsum. The charges defray the cost of picking up the deceased, she said in the 2016 interview. (McGovern said no industry regulated by the Division of Professions and Occupations has regulators assigned exclusively to it.) 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. Hess had created a nonprofit organization in 2009 called Sunset Mesa Funeral Foundation as a body-broker service doing business as Donor Services, authorities said. The federal case was triggered by a 2016-2018 Reuters investigative series about the sale of body parts in the United States, a virtually unregulated industry. You've successfully subscribed to this newsletter! Authorities are now investigating. 06, 2021. Build the strongest argument relying on authoritative content, attorney-editor expertise, and industry defining technology. DENVER, Colorado - A former Colorado funeral home owner was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison on Tuesday for defrauding relatives of the dead by dissecting 560 . Some former staff members of Sunset Mesa said they never heard Hess disclose to donors that the bodies would be sold for profit. 2023 FOX News Network, LLC. felt they were too heavy to be those of a stillborn child, and submitted them for analysis. Torsos are a popular specimen these days, she wrote. She has been told parts of her husbands body were sold on the world-wide market. Reuters Investigates offers several ways to securely contact our reporters. Hes already facing charges of official misconduct and perjury stemming from allegations last year that he sent his wife Staci to multiple death scenes even though she wasnt authorized to serve as a deputy coroner. MILLERSVILLE, Pa. (WHTM) A Lancaster County funeral home and its director are facing formal disciplinary action and are under investigation by the state. Hess' lawyer said she has been unfairly vilified as a "witch," a "monster" and a "ghoul," when instead she is a "broken human being" whose conduct can be attributed to a traumatic brain injury at age 18. Such a partnership may raise ethical concerns because it creates a financial incentive for the funeral home. Email: newsroom@coloradosun.com The other nine were structured as nonprofits, including Donor Services the only broker Reuters could find that still doubles as a funeral home. 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. A pelvis with upper legs went for $1,200, heads for $500, a knee for $250, and a foot for $125, according to a 2013 Donor Services price list reviewed by Reuters. The remains Hess returned to families were also not those of their loved ones. 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. Shannon and Staci Kent did not respond to interview requests from The Denver Post. More Reuters investigations and long-form narratives, Got a confidential news tip? Now the women wonder how many others might have had the same experience. Reuters could find no other operation active in the United States that houses a funeral home, crematory and body broker in the same facility and under the same ownership. Colorado regulators shut down the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in 2018. When Reuters visited her facility in 2016, Hess said Donor Services represented just 15 percent or so of her total business. SENTINEL FILE PHOTO Sisters Layna and Janet Hutt hold photos of their father, Raymond Hutt, who died in 2016 at the age of 96. 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. Further, the van was holding two other bodies that needed to be removed.. There are people and businesses who spend millions and millions of dollars," Teselle added, "trafficking in these body parts as if they were nothing more than cans of soup or loaves of bread., I was pretty shocked, said Jacque Hampson, a former employee of the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose. Now its possible its not my baby in the urn, Reh said. A Medical Examiner can often discover hidden evidence of injury to explain a sudden death, or can document natural diseases to show that no foul play was involved in the death. Both Hess and Koch originally had pleaded not guilty to the charges. Meme Eberspacher, Dunlaps niece, was at his bedside the night that Dunlap died. Kent also still faces second-degree official misconduct charges stemming from a September 2019 grand jury indictment in the Fifth Judicial District. 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. Colorado regulators have shut down the funeral home. Subscribe today to see what all the buzz is about. No one would pick up the phone. Along with it would be a note reading: Heres looking at you. The rest of his ashes would be buried with Dunlaps mother in Denver. State Bans Coroner Shannon Kent From Private Business After Remains, Waste Found At Home-Based Colorado Funeral Home December 3, 2020 / 7:33 AM / CBS Colorado Reuters provides business, financial, national and international news to professionals via desktop terminals, the world's media organizations, industry events and directly to consumers. This is a way we can eliminate or alleviate the black market on body parts, Crowder added. On March 16, the director of the Office of Funeral Home and Crematory Registration sent Kent a letter of admonition after a state investigator found unembalmed, unrefrigerated bodily remains in his Gypsum funeral home more than 24 hours from the date of death. Hancocks story started after her husband, Thomas, passed away. There is even more money to be made in dissecting those bodies and selling the parts. 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. According to Reuters Sunset Mesa Funeral Home had seen their call volume increase from 59 in 2015 to 128 in 2017. And as of. Legal Statement. LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A Jeffersonville funeral home is under investigation after the owner allegedly got behind on processing bodies, which began stacking up for an unknown period of. In mid-March, Kent received a letter of admonition" from the Office of Funeral Home and Crematory Registration after unembalmed, unrefrigerated remains were found in the Gypsum funeral home over 24 hours after the person had died. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. I'll never be OK.". The funeral home's owners, Megan Hess, 43, and her mother . Her 69-year-old mother, Shirley Koch, also pleaded guilty to fraud and was sentenced to 15 years. Hess and Koch also shipped bodies and body parts that tested positive for, or belonged to people who died from, infectious diseases including Hepatitis B and C, and HIV, despite certifying to buyers that the remains were disease-free, authorities said. I see his body parts floating in space and I keep trying to grab them and put him back and I can't! Chantal Reh, an Avon resident, went through a similar experience when she suffered a stillborn birth in August 2018. It is illegal in the United States to sell organs such as hearts, kidneys and tendons for transplant; they must be donated. 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 focus and extent of the federal probe into the Hess operation is unclear, and the FBI also declined to comment. You are not looking at the full disposition (of a body). . A woman is among more than five dozen family members currently suing the family that operated the now shut-down Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose, after finding out her husband's body parts had been sold without her consent. I just had the impression that something wasnt right all along. He said neither Hess nor Koch told him that his friends body parts would be sold. But no federal law governs the sale of cadavers or body parts for use in research or education. The New York Times, a far-left outlet, admitted in a report that Trump's rollback of a rule from President Barack At her funeral home, Hess charged families up to $1,000 for cremations that never occurred, prosecutors said, and she offered others free cremations in exchange for a body donation. In addition, a lawsuit has been filed by Shirley Hollenback and her daughter alleging that the remains she received purported to be the cremation ashes of her husband are somebody elses remains and not those of her husband. Be an organ donor, a slogan often used by organ transplant advocates. It described a body broker as a company that acquires dead bodies, dissects them and sells the parts for profit to medical researchers, training organizations and other buyers.. The investigation of Kents funeral homes began in February after the sheriffs office received a complaint by a client regarding the handling of human remains. Reuters began examining the Hess companies more than a year ago as part of the news agencys exploration of the human body trade, a virtually unregulated industry that largely operates in the shadows. The lawsuit estimates the three were making $40,000 a month from the sale of body parts. [the FBI told me] his head was sent to so and so. "We don't even have a name for a crime this heinous. The Donor Services brochure was criticized as deceptive by two major U.S. organ donation groups after Reuters shared it with them. Kent has not been arrested in this latest incident and no charges have been filed, though the two funeral homes business licenses have been suspended by the state.