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. Reuters has reported in a report that you can read here that the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home of Montrose, Colorado, and its associated business, Donor Services, remains under investigation by the FBI. Kent kept giving excuses, Cavanagh said. Such multipurpose operations raise ethical concerns, several funeral industry veterans said. After Mabry threatened to sue Hess for losing the eye, he said Hess wrote him a check: $500, a refund of the money Dunlap had paid to donate plus $5. The indictment accuses Kent of allowing his wife to go out to death scenes as a deputy coroner, even though she took no oath and an appointment had not been filed with the county clerk, as required by law. Kent also operates funeral homes in Silverthorne, Idaho Springs, Fairplay and Buena Vista. Ive had nightmares about it, said Fredericka Freddie Hancock. Authorities also uncovered multiple refrigerated bodies which were wrapped in sheets or blankets but did not have any tags or paperwork identifying them. On Oct. 13, the state shut down both the Gypsum operation and . 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. Email address: Colorado Funeral Home / Body Broker Continues Under Investigation, Acquisitions, buy-outs, creative ideas. Read on to see why: At a glance, the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home appeared to be a business helping locals through the loss of their loved ones. No one returned her voicemails. 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. Catch up on the days top five stories every weekday afternoon. A Colorado funeral home is accused of victimizing families after claims that it secretly sold body parts in the hours after death. 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. What You Need To Know. The name of the state is derived form the Spanish . Before referring questions to a lawyer, Hess spoke extensively with Reuters about her body broker company. But days went by and she couldnt reach anyone. 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. Nursing Home Under Investigation After Woman Declared Dead Found Breathing at Funeral Home The incident happened at the Water's Edge Rehab and Nursing Center in Port Jefferson, the. by Mr. Leadville | Oct 26, 2020 | Leadville News. Kent operates six funeral homes in the states high country, which also include Buena Vista, Fairplay, Idaho Springs, and Silverthorne. Sunset Mesas operators, Megan Hess and Shirley Koch, were indicted by a federal grand jury in March for allegedly shipping body parts all over the world against the will of family members, who found out years later that the ashes in their homes were not those of their loved ones. All they got was the urn and a death certificate no other paperwork. It was kinda creepy., It is totally unregulated, said Burg. The surgical-training companies and other firms which bought the arms, legs, heads and torsos from Hess did not know they had been fraudulently obtained, prosecutors said. First published on Wed 6 Jul 2022 10.36 EDT. The Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors and Donor Services building in Montrose, Colorado, U.S., December 16, 2017. An agent with the FBI has interviewed at least four former employees who worked for funeral director and body broker Megan Hess, seeking information about how she operates her businesses, the former workers told Reuters. Such a partnership may raise ethical concerns because it creates a financial incentive for the funeral home. 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. These illegitimate businesses are buying and selling body parts just like anything off the shelf at Walmart, added Teselle. Its not something that can be fixed., Hancock was notified by the FBI that her husbands body parts had been sold without her consent. 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. Buyers ranged from educators and scientists to individuals in the medical industry. Hansons box included wires and what appear to be old batteries. A Colorado funeral home is under federal investigation over accusations it doubled as a body broker firm, buying and selling human body parts, a Reuters special report revealed Tuesday. Officials also found the "post-cremation remains" of 16 people, according . Pictures show bodies stacked in hallways and unrefrigerated rental trucks. Chantal Reh. Enter your email address to join 3,177 readers who subscribe to all Funeral Director articles. Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way. On Monday, the family of Ramon Lara Castillo a 63-year-old Nashville house painter who succumbed to liver cancer in October 2020 filed a federal lawsuit against former funeral director Reid Van Ness and the operators of a funeral home in Lewisburg, Tenn. Roommates and friends of Castillo paid Van Ness $1,800 to ship the body home to his . Kent also operates funeral homes in Silverthorne, Idaho Springs, Fairplay and Buena Vista. (William Woody, Special to the Colorado Sun), Lawmakers targeting hospital facility fees, (720) 263-2338 Call, text, Signal or WhatsApp, Proudly powered by Newspack by Automattic. GRAND JUNCTION, COLORADO: On allegations of fraud and illegally selling body parts, a former owner of a funeral home in Colorado was given a 20-year term in federal prison. Records from the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies showthis was not the first time Kent has been in the crosshairs of state regulators. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Its for profit and people dont realize there is a huge demand for cadavers and body parts., That demand comes from all over the world including medical schools, law enforcement agencies, the military and a variety of other industries looking to legitimately purchase bodies and body parts for credible research. The gruesome details of the case which authorities say included more than 500 victims drew international attention and shined a light on the . Fells called running such a multifaceted operation a new frontier., Through the attorney, Hess declined to comment for this story and didnt address questions about the FBI probe, her business practices, and the allegations by former employees. After reading the states suspension order this week, two women told The Denver Post that the circumstances surrounding E.W. sound eerily familiar. There are no ethics there when you do that.. 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. 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. However, there was more going on beneath the surface. Hess, 45, and her mother, Shirley Koch, operated the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose. ", Funeral home remains under federal investigation. Escher said Koch, who embalmed and dismembered bodies, pulled teeth from some of the corpses to extract the gold in crowns or fillings. I went through a very bad crisis losing the baby, Cavanagh said. But the business arrangement is highly unusual. In one instance, on March 10, 2019, Staci Kent was significantly delayed to the scene because the van she was using to pick up the body had a dead battery, bald tires and was buried in snow, prosecutors alleged. In court on Tuesday, Hess declined to speak to the judge. Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox. Heads went for $500 and $250 for a knee prices at significantly discounted rates compared to other body brokers. SENTINEL FILE PHOTO Sisters Layna and Janet Hutt hold photos of their father, Raymond Hutt, who died in 2016 at the age of 96. Her 69-year-old mother, Shirley Koch, also pleaded guilty to fraud and was sentenced to 15 years. 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. With a population of about 20,000, Montrose is a community surrounded by the beauty of the Rocky Mountains. The couple got dressed up in matching outfits and brought a special camera. 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Details uncovered in the FBI investigation were shared with her. In February of 2018, Colorado regulators shut down the funeral home at the same time the FBI was investigating claims families did not receive the real cremains of their loved ones. A Colorado funeral home operator accused of illegally selling body parts and giving clients fake ashes has been sentenced to 20 years in prison. Browse an unrivalled portfolio of real-time and historical market data and insights from worldwide sources and experts. We did not provide our messaging to be repurposed in this brochure, and are following up, said spokeswoman Erin Dolin. The 20-year term was the maximum allowed under law. 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. Access unmatched financial data, news and content in a highly-customised workflow experience on desktop, web and mobile. 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. Each edition is filled with exclusive news, analysis and other behind-the-scenes information you wont find anywhere else. Megan Hess, the owner of Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose, and her parents are now under investigation by the FBI. They both plan to file complaints with the Department of Regulatory Affairs. 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. They were affiliated with her funeral business. A funeral home in Crapaud, Prince Edward Island is under RCMP investigation for allegations of financial irregularities. 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. 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. According to Reuters Sunset Mesa Funeral Home had seen their call volume increase from 59 in 2015 to 128 in 2017. According to High Country News, Hess was running the funeral home in conjunction with a non-profit called Donor Services Inc., through which she sold "donated" body parts to companies a practice referred to as body brokering. Kent kept giving excuses, Cavanagh said. 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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 charges defray the cost of picking up the deceased, she said in the 2016 interview. When Mabry and Eberspacher went to Sunset Mesa the morning after Dunlap died, Hess and Koch said they could not locate the eye, Eberspacher said. The Bailey-Kent Funeral Home was the only option given to her for cremation under a certain weight, she said. No one would pick up the phone. In mid-November, she wrote an email to a surgical training company saying that she could supply a human torso, according to messages reviewed by Reuters. John Wayne Gacy House: Now. She said that one month she got about $40,000 from selling donated bodies. 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. felt they were too heavy to be those of a stillborn child, and submitted them for analysis. Further, the van was holding two other bodies that needed to be removed.. Colorado regulators shut Sunset Mesa down in February 2018, KMGH-TV reported. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Twenty-five of the brokers were for-profit corporations. She said, No, no, well take care of that first thing in the morning, recalled Eberspacher. Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors of Montrose handled the funeral . 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. Jan 3 (Reuters) - 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 corpses and selling body. "Hess and Koch used their funeral home at times to essentially steal bodies and body parts using fraudulent and forged donor forms," prosecutor Tim Neff said in a court filing. Investigators discovered 31 dead bodies, some of which were in advanced stages of decomposition. There are currently 350 funeral home listings for the state of Colorado and we provide all the cemetery information for the state as well. Responding to the investigations and details reported out of Montrose, Colorado lawmakers could become the first in the country to pass a law making it illegal for funeral home or crematory owners to operate as a body broker. Hess is tentatively set to be sentenced in January. Reuters identified 34 body brokers that have been active across the United States during the past five years. After receiving the cremains, E.W. 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. In Colorado, the states organ donation program, Donor Alliance, said Hesss marketing language could be confusing to people.. The FBI started looking into Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors and Donor Services a few months after it was discovered that both businesses were being operated out of the same building and by the same owner, according to thereport. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. . All they got was the urn and a death certificate no other paperwork. Learn more about Colorado true crime stories in the gallery below. A body bag was found to be leaking bodily fluids along with a container of animal remains which was also leaking fluids. Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information. This whole situation, oh, I thought it was part of my past.. Records from the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies showthis was not the first time Kent has been in the crosshairs of state regulators. Colorado regulators have shut down the funeral home. Instead of paying the standard $695 cremation fee to . I'll never be OK.". Body brokers sometimes market their services using language that could mislead prospective donors into believing the broker handles organ donations. In cases like Schum's, where a family did agree to donate a body part, Hess sold more than she had permission to. 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. Megan Hess, 46, operated the Sunset Mesa funeral home in Montrose, Colorado, alongside a body-parts entity called Donor Services, where she undertook the grisly scheme, starting in 2010. 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. . The allegations of offering free services and then selling body parts without the knowledge of the client family is beyond my scope of thinking as to what funeral directors should be doing. According to theDenver Post, prosecutors reached a plea agreement with Hess this year regarding a 2020 indictment against her and her mother. On January 8, 2011, U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords and 18 others were shot during a constituent meeting held in a supermarket parking lot in Casas Adobes, Arizona, in the Tucson metropolitan area. 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. Before he died in 2016, the 78-year-old retired contractor saved $200 on cremation by agreeing to pledge parts of his body to Donor Services. All rights reserved. ", Tina Shanon, whose mother was dismembered against her will, told the court, "I've worn many masks to cover the pain. Megan Hess, the owner of Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose, and her parents are now under investigation by the FBI. Take a look at some of Colorado's most notorious crimes. Two Colorado funeral homes are under criminal investigation after authorities found a unrefrigerated body and learned that at least one family had received a stillborns cremains mixed with portions of adult remains as well as metal fragments. Koch told the judge she was sorry and took responsibility for her actions. John Wayne Gacy's house has since been torn down and replaced with a new residence, built on the same land where Gacy reportedly buried many of his victims. 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. 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. Its a community struggling to understand the stories and the accusations about what happened in the back room at Sunset Mesa. While Sunset Mesa legally is permitted to own and operate both businesses, Reuters found that there was no other active instance where a funeral home, crematory and body broker had the same owner and were in the same facility. Donating bodies, selling the parts: Frequently asked questions. A few days later, she was able to pick up the cremains, but like E.W., Cavanagh received no paperwork. 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. 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 But selling body parts such as heads, arms and spines which is what Hess did for use in research or education is not regulated by federal law. Thousands more patients could benefit from life saving and healing eye and tissue donations.. Subscribe to Funeral Director Daily 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. I said I dont want to hear anymore.. The next year,. Body snatcher, vile, pure evil, sociopath, are the words they used when asked to describe Hess. Reuters Investigates offers several ways to securely contact our reporters. One of Hesss donors was Rex Dunlap, a frugal Coloradan battling brain cancer. The body was identified as that of 42 . 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. "This is the most emotionally draining. While operating Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose, Colorado, Hess and Koch sold remains of the deceased for body broker services without family consent and gave families ashes that were. Teselle said, Whats shocking to me is that theres not an outcry for there to be more legislation, theres not an outcry for the government to regulate and license these people.. The operators of a Colorado funeral home suspected of running a side business selling body parts without consent have been indicted on fraud and illegally transporting diseased cadavers. I didnt believe in depression until I lost my baby, Cavanagh said. They are distinct from the organ and tissue transplant industry, which the U.S. government closely regulates. Kent has not yet been arrested for the most recent incidents, which at the Leadville funeral home included authorities' discovery of an abandoned stillborn, according to the Oct. 13 summary suspension issued by Colorados Office of Funeral Home and Crematory Registration. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Hancocks story started after her husband, Thomas, passed away. (If they've been left standing. Some of those family members are now questioning if the services were held free of charge while Donor Services sent some of the remains (body parts) to clients for payments without the knowledge and consent of family members. Suppliers of transplant tissue must obtain federal recognition and operate as charities. Peck was given another six months of probation. 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.

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