Funeral home operator sentenced to 20 years in prison for selling body parts without consent
Colorado funeral home operators accused of illegally selling body parts and giving clients fake ashes have been sentenced to prison time.
U.S. District Judge Christine Arguello sentenced Megan Hess, 46, to 20 years in prison and her mother, Shirley Koch, 69, to 15 years, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado said in a news release this week.
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 not those of their loved ones, prosecutors said.
Both Hess and Koch previously pleaded guilty to one count each of mail fraud and aiding and abetting. According to a plea agreement, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said, that "(Hess) and others stole the bodies or body parts of hundreds of victims" from 2010 to 2018.
"The defendants' conduct was horrific and morbid and driven by greed. They took advantage of numerous victims who were at their lowest point given the recent loss of a loved one," U.S. Attorney Cole Finegan said in a statement. "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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Ashley Petrey, Hess' attorney, told the court on Tuesday that Hess was motivated by a desire to advance medical research.
"Though she lost her way, her motives were always pure and good," Petrey said, The Daily Sentinel reported.
Assistant United States Attorney Tim Neff challenged those motives. "Eight years of repeated conduct of this nature is all the court needs to know about her history and character," Neff said in response.
Koch's attorneys declined to comment when contact by USA TODAY on Thursday. USA TODAY also reached out to attorneys for Hess.
Cremations that never happened
From 2010 to 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, an indictment said.
In 2009, authorities said, Hess created a nonprofit called the Sunset Mesa Funeral Foundation as a body-broker service which was used to transfer bodies or body parts to third parties.
Instead of cremating the deceased and providing their remains to their families, "the defendant and others would harvest body parts from, or prepare the entire bodies of, the decedents' for sale in body broker services," the U.S. Attorney's Office said in its Tuesday release.
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Koch was also involved in meetings with families seeking cremation services, according to her plea agreement. In "many instances," the U.S. Attorney's Office said, the two women did not discuss or obtain authorization for donation to body broker services.
In instances when families agreed to donation, Hess and Koch sold remains "beyond what was authorized by the family," the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
According to the plea agreements, the U.S. Attorney's Office said, Hess and Koch also shipped remains 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 bodies or body parts were "disease-free."
'I don't know what happened to her'
Kayla Lyons, for example, had arranged to have her late mother, Doris Cox, cremated at Sunset Mesa Funeral Home after her 2017 death. The family believed they had buried her ashes at a family plot in Oklahoma, until an FBI investigation revealed in 2018 that their mother's body parts were sold for research without their knowledge.
"I don't know what happened to her," Lyons told WFAA-TV at the time.
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Arguello sentenced Hess and Koch on Tuesday after other victims testified with similar stories, sharing the pain they had suffered.
“They robbed my family not only of my dad’s body, but of all the memories we had of it,” said Joy Christian, whose father died in 2014, according to The Daily Sentinel.
The U.S. Attorney's Office noted that the investigation into the years-long scheme was led by the FBI Denver Division and the Department of Transportation Office of the Inspector General.
"Without knowledge or consent, (Hess and Koch) disrespected the wishes of the grieving victims and degraded the bodies of their family members to sell them for profit," FBI Denver Acting Special Agent in Charge Leonard Carollo said in a statement.
Hess declined to address the court on Tuesday, the Associated Press said.
"I acknowledge my guilt and take responsibility for my actions. I’m very sorry for harm I caused you and your families," Koch said during the sentencing hearing.
A victim restitution hearing is scheduled to be held in March.
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Contributing: The Associated Press.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Colorado funeral home operators sentenced for selling body parts
