That means almost anyone, regardless of expertise, can dissect and sell human remains. Chantal Reh. They cut him up in pieces and sent them all over the place.. A Colorado funeral home is under federal investigation over accusations it doubledas a body broker firm, buying and selling human body parts, aReuters special report revealedTuesday. I saw a lot inside as far as, you know, body parts and things like that. She continued, But I was oblivious to what was going on. Ive been violated, said Alena Holloman. Ive had nightmares about it, said Fredericka Freddie Hancock. ", Tina Shanon, whose mother was dismembered against her will, told the court, "I've worn many masks to cover the pain. More Reuters investigations and long-form narratives, Got a confidential news tip? She told Contact7 Investigates that she heard bodies being dismembered. There, authorities also found dried bodily fluid on surgical equipment, the metal preparation table, and the floor. I told them it didnt make sense, Mabry said. Investigators discovered 31 dead bodies, some of which were in advanced stages of decomposition. As she mourned the loss of her son, Cavanagh was referred to the Kent Funeral Home in Gypsum to do the cremation. By submitting your email to receive this newsletter, you agree to our. 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. Other staff members also said that it was never disclosed to donor families that the corpses would be sold for profit a potentially illegal practice. 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. She operated a funeral home, Sunset Mesa, and a body parts entity, Donor Services, from the same building in Montrose, Colorado. It is a business and it is a profit business, added Burg. His two shoulders went somewhere else. "This is the most emotionally draining. 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. You could hear the machine going, she told Kovaleski. Browse an unrivalled portfolio of real-time and historical market data and insights from worldwide sources and experts. MONTROSE, Colo. A Colorado funeral home is accused of victimizing families after claims that it secretly sold body parts in the hours after death. A Colorado funeral home operator accused of illegally selling body parts and giving clients fake ashes has been sentenced to 20 years in prison. 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 Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors and Donor Services building in Montrose, Colorado, U.S., December 16, 2017. Think about it, the FBI came in and raided them, and they raided them because they knew this body broker this was getting bigger and bigger and bigger, said Berg. 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. First published on Wed 6 Jul 2022 10.36 EDT. Thank you for thinking of me.. The Justice Department did not respond to Fox News' request for comment. Kent also still faces second-degree official misconduct charges stemming from a September 2019 grand jury indictment in the Fifth Judicial District. Two Colorado funeral homes are under criminal investigation after authorities found a unrefrigerated body and learned that at least one family had received a stillborn's cremains mixed. You are looking at how to make money.. Torsos are a popular specimen these days, she wrote. 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. It is the only state in the country that does not license funeral home and. Why their loved ones were stolen from them, and they were given back dry cement or sand and told it was loved ones ashes, said Teselle. 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. On Oct. 13, the state shut down both the Gypsum operation and . (Google). That individual, referred to in the order only as E.W., received no notice that the cremation would be done at the Gypsum funeral home, one of six locations Kent operates in Colorados high country. Telling stories that matter in a dynamic, evolving state. We did not provide our messaging to be repurposed in this brochure, and are following up, said spokeswoman Erin Dolin. Reuters, the news and media division of Thomson Reuters, is the worlds largest multimedia news provider, reaching billions of people worldwide every day. 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. The lawsuit estimates the three were making $40,000 a month from the sale of body parts. Both have become experts on the secret industry of selling body parts on a world wide market. The suspension order details a 2019 instance in which an unnamed individual arranged with Kents funeral home for the cremation of their stillborn child. More by The Associated Press, Got a story tip? Investigation into the allegations are ongoing with the Texas Funeral Services . The conflict of interest of having a side business in body parts just leads to problems. Sam Tabachnik is a roving reporter for The Denver Post, focusing on stories outside metro Denver. The recent parade of early deaths has hit close to home. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper. Colorado does not regulate body brokers. The Daily Sentinel reports that Megan Hess faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison after entering the plea Tuesday in Grand Junction. Take a look at some of Colorado's most notorious crimes. Denver attorneys Mike Berg and Dave Teselle now represent more than 50 families who claim Hess and her parents victimized them. Hess, 45, and her mother, Shirley Koch, operated the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose. 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 remains Hess returned to families were also not those of their loved ones. Suppliers of transplant tissue must obtain federal recognition and operate as charities. After receiving the cremains, E.W. But two said Hess sometimes bragged about how lucrative it was to sell bodies and body parts. Each edition is filled with exclusive news, analysis and other behind-the-scenes information you wont find anywhere else. 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. 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. The transfers were done through Sunset Mesa Funeral Foundation and Donor Services, authorities said. She took orders for body parts via Hotmail, email records show. In 2018, Schum got a call from FBI Special Agent John Busch, who told her that Sunset Mesa had sold not just her friend's body, but many others. Kent kept giving excuses, Cavanagh said. 2023 FOX News Network, LLC. Her 69-year-old mother, Shirley Koch, also pleaded guilty to fraud and was sentenced to 15 years. He has served as Lake County coroner since 2012 and was reelected to a four-year term in November 2018. Unfortunately, the attention wasn't focused on the town's natural beauty or tourism opportunities. MONTROSE, Colo. (CBS4) - Federal authorities raided a funeral home in Montrose on Tuesday, at which the owner is under investigation for a side-business donating bodies for education and. 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. 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. . "We don't even have a name for a crime this heinous. Former workers told Reuters that Hess and Koch conducted unauthorized dismemberments of bodies, and a few weeks after a 2018 story was published, the FBI raided the business. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. He has served as Lake County coroner since 2012 and was reelected to a four-year term in November 2018. Subscribe to Funeral Director Daily 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. They were arrested in 2020 and charged with six counts of mail fraud and three counts of illegal transportation of hazardous materials. Buyers ranged from educators and scientists to individuals in the medical industry. A A A Colorado-based funeral home director has been sentenced to 20 years in prison stemming from a litany of charges including fraud and illegally selling the body parts or bodies of approximately 500 individuals whose families did not consent to that practice. Two funeral homes owned by Lake County Coroner Shannon Kent are under investigation after law enforcement earlier this month found an unrefrigerated body, an abandoned stillborn infant, bags of unl Now the women wonder how many others might have had the same experience. 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. 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. The couple got dressed up in matching outfits and brought a special camera. The states Department of Regulatory Agencies said it has nine open complaints about Sunset Mesa higher than average for funeral homes in the state, said spokesman Lee Rasizer. Instead, the media was interested in the dark history behind the town's funeral home, Sunset Mesa. Holloman now deals with the guilt of knowing details of what happened to her moms body. 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. Details uncovered in the FBI investigation were shared with her. Hoping to get answers, Denver7 visited Hess home in Montrose. 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. Bailey-Kent Funeral Home, pictured at left, is one of two funeral homes owned by Shannon Kent now under criminal investigation. 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. This all began when a severely decomposed body was reported by a state health inspector. According to Reuters Sunset Mesa Funeral Home had seen their call volume increase from 59 in 2015 to 128 in 2017. Before referring questions to a lawyer, Hess spoke extensively with Reuters about her body broker company. 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. Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way. 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. 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. 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. You are not looking at the full disposition (of a body). PUBLISHED 8:21 PM CT Apr. There are no ethics there when you do that. The suspension order details a 2019 instance in which an unnamed individual arranged with Kents funeral home for the cremation of their stillborn child. Colorado regulators can now inspect funeral homes and crematories without owners' permission The state has long had some of the laxest laws in the nation surrounding funeral homes Joe. The owner of the funeral homes, Shannon Kent, is also Lake Countys coroner. No one returned her voicemails. These people deserve to know why what was done to them was done to them. The Donor Services brochure was criticized as deceptive by two major U.S. organ donation groups after Reuters shared it with them. 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 . I went through a very bad crisis losing the baby, Cavanagh said. None of the former employees or associates Reuters interviewed worked directly for the body broker business. Non-compete agreements, Customer Experience, Community Engagement. Prosecutors recommended a sentence for Hess of 12 to 15 years. By: Tony Kovaleski Posted at 6:00 PM, Oct 31, 2019 Paul Hawthorne, Getty Images. 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.. As a matter of fact, the FBI has set up a hot line and e-mail address for potential victims of the businesses to contact with information. An indictment filed last week by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Denver alleges 43-year-old Megan Hess, of Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors and Donor Services, harvested body parts from hundreds of dead people without any authorization from their families. 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. You know, they can't put his head back on his body, they can't put his arms and legs back on his body. The home, located at 8215 W. Summerdale Ave., was sold for just shy of $400,000 in May 2021. (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. In Colorado and most other states, it's legal for funeral homes to sell items taken from corpses, including the gold found in teeth. A spokeswoman for Donate LifeAmerica said in an email that Hesss firm is not a federally designated organ procurement organization and has no permission to use the Donate Life brand. heres a recap of our months top stories, Carriage Services reports Services and Revenue drops in 2022. Neither addressed the issue about the teeth. Burg and Teselles law firm is currently suing body brokers in both Colorado and Arizona. The Lankford Funeral Home and Family Center is under investigation by Jeffersonville Police Detective Division after 31 deceased individuals and the post-cremated remains of 16 individuals. Fo His head and his arms from his elbows to his fingers, his legs from his knees to his toes, had been removed from his body and they had been sold.. (McGovern said no industry regulated by the Division of Professions and Occupations has regulators assigned exclusively to it.) In Colorado, the states organ donation program, Donor Alliance, said Hesss marketing language could be confusing to people.. 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. She showed Denver7 the container that she was given. Reuters identified 34 body brokers that have been active across the United States during the past five years. She says Shirley Koch came to pick up his body. The article also tells about how Sunset Mesa Funeral Home handled some services free of charge. "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. Screen for heightened risk individual and entities globally to help uncover hidden risks in business relationships and human networks. After a reporter asked questions about the websiteand her background, Hess removed the Add to Cart donation pages from her cremation website and cut the mention of the mortuary science degree from her online biography. N.Y. 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. In Colorado, there are few regulations to catch shoddy behavior, such as illegitimate body trading, by mortuaries. 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. After reading the states suspension order this week, two women told The Denver Post that the circumstances surrounding E.W. sound eerily familiar. Instead of paying the standard $695 cremation fee to Colorado Cremation, Hesss former cremation marketing business, Dunlap paid Hess $495 to take his body. Body brokers like Donor Services are also known as non-transplant tissue banks. Its tentacles go throughout not only the country but the world.. The 20-year term was the maximum allowed under law. The Green Funeral. Hess, however, charged families to donate their bodies $195, plus $300 more if relatives want cremated remains returned. Colorado regulators shut down the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in 2018. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. The Bailey-Kent Funeral Home was the only option given to her for cremation under a certain weight, she said. What You Need To Know. 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. . NBC10 . 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. The emotional, daylong hearing brought to a close a five-year legal odyssey that began when the FBI raided the funeral home in February 2018, following a Reuters investigation that found Sunset Mesa to be unlike any other business in the country. It comes on the heels of a law passed in 2020 that. 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. No one returned her voicemails. 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. SENTINEL FILE PHOTO Sisters Layna and Janet Hutt hold photos of their father, Raymond Hutt, who died in 2016 at the age of 96. Access unmatched financial data, news and content in a highly-customised workflow experience on desktop, web and mobile. Koch's central role was chopping up the bodies, court records show. 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. DENVER -- To many it is simply the unthinkable. Hess made donating a body online easy. "It's concerning to the court that defendant Hess refuses to assume any responsibility for her conduct.". 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. Be an organ donor, a slogan often used by organ transplant advocates. 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. Copyright 2019 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. 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. After reading the states suspension order this week, two women told The Denver Post that the circumstances surrounding E.W. sound eerily familiar. All rights reserved. or redistributed. 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 know these are not his ashes because his body parts went all over the country, Hanson said. On at least three occasions, Staci Kent allegedly responded to calls from law enforcement requesting a coroner at a death scene, according to the indictment. In cases like Schum's, where a family did agree to donate a body part, Hess sold more than she had permission to. Koch told the judge she was sorry and took responsibility for her actions. Learn more about Colorado true crime stories in the gallery below. Hess runs Sunset Mesa, a funeral home, and Donor Services, a body broker operation from the same building in Montrose. A funeral home in Indiana is under investigation after allegedly falling behind on processing dead bodies for an unknown period of time, but at least a few months. He had been dismembered. A body bag was found to be leaking bodily fluids along with a container of animal remains which was also leaking fluids. 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. She said, No, no, well take care of that first thing in the morning, recalled Eberspacher. Authorities are now investigating. A few days later, she was able to pick up the cremains, but like E.W., Cavanagh received no paperwork. 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. Six people were killed, including federal District Court Chief Judge John Roll; Gabe Zimmerman, one of Giffords's staffers; and a 9-year-old girl . A price quote Hess sent to an Arizona medical training lab in 2016 offered torsos for $1,000 each. A funeral director who also works as a body broker could have a financial incentive to sell a body for its valuable parts rather than provide an inexpensive burial, for instance. A price list uncovered during an ongoing lawsuit against an Arizona body broker provides insight into the value of body parts and the profits that can be produced. It is also the only state that doesnt license funeral directors. 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. Thats when E.W. Hancocks story started after her husband, Thomas, passed away. ), Windsors Newest Hot Spot is Open and Smells of Glorious Bacon [Photos], The Cheapest Home in Weld County is Selling for Less Than $90K, Local Fort Collins Photographer Wins 3rd Grammy in the Visual Arts, WATCH: This Deleted Scene From The Office Totally Calls Out Colorado, The 2023 Cheyenne Frontier Days Concert Lineup Has Been Announced, This Weeks Larimer Countys Most Wanted: Dallas Rusk, 3 Northern Colorado Districts in Top 10 for Slow Internet Access, New Life Planned for this Beloved Greeley Building, the dark history behind the town's funeral home, READ: This 1993 Steamboat Springs Murder Became One of the Nation's Most Chilling Cases. This comes after a dozen . 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. But no federal law governs the sale of cadavers or body parts for use in research or education. 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. The Lake County Sheriffs Office confirmed an active criminal investigation is underway. 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. Staci Kent, however, wouldnt let them see the baby, Reh said. Like many, Hanson found out about her son Frederick during a phone call from an FBI agent. 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. 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. Updated: 8:07 PM MDT September 14, 2021. Ducks, Used body bags, medical gloves and other surgical equipment with dried bodily fluid on them piled on the floor, Bodily fluids leaking out of a body bag containing an individual who had not been refrigerated, A container of animal remains leaking fluids, Several bodies in refrigeration wrapped in sheets or blankets without identifying tags or paperwork, An unmarked casket containing a stillborn infant that was abandoned, the suspension order states, Paperwork scattered several feet deep on the floor. . The fact that now the business is also making money from the sale of body parts if that is not being told to the family, it is unethical and probably illegal, if only as deception, said Robert Fells, general counsel of the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association, an industry trade group. 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. The Bailey-Kent Funeral Home was the only option given to her for cremation under a certain weight, she said. This is a way we can eliminate or alleviate the black market on body parts, Crowder added. I see his body parts floating in space and I keep trying to grab them and put him back and I can't! Market data provided by Factset. 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. The gruesome details of the case which authorities say included more than 500 victims drew international attention and shined a light on the . 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.

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