Instead, the media was interested in the dark history behind the town's funeral home, Sunset Mesa. A Colorado funeral home is accused of victimizing families after claims that it secretly sold body parts in the hours after death. The lawsuit estimates the three were making $40,000 a month from the sale of body parts. This is a way we can eliminate or alleviate the black market on body parts, Crowder added. Pam Boyd/pboyd@vaildaily.com. The 20-year term was the maximum allowed under law. Thats when E.W. It can't be fixed, said Hancock. . A human head and spine sold for $850, while a full pelvis all the way to the toes priced out at $2,850. A funeral service will be held on Saturday, March 4th 2023 at 10:30 AM at the First Church of the Nazarene (505 E Beatty Ave, Yuma, CO 80759). They are distinct from the organ and tissue transplant industry, which the U.S. government closely regulates. Learn more about Colorado true crime stories in the gallery below. Prior to the raid, the cost of purchasing an arm and shoulder was $600. The Daily Sentinel reportsthat Megan Hess faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison after entering the plea Tuesday in Grand Junction. Reached by phone at Sunset Mesa, Koch said she did not wish to talk with a Reuters reporter. 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. One of Hesss donors was Rex Dunlap, a frugal Coloradan battling brain cancer. According to the Johnstown, N.Y. Police Department, Brian M. Barnett, 35, who owns the since-shuttered Ehle . The attorney, Carol Viner, asked Reuters to refrain from contacting Hess employees for any reason.. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. She signed a contract with a Montrose funeral home to have his body cremated. The other nine were structured as nonprofits, including Donor Services the only broker Reuters could find that still doubles as a funeral home. a contrarian view? Email address: Colorado Funeral Home / Body Broker Continues Under Investigation, Acquisitions, buy-outs, creative ideas. A change of plea hearing for Koch is scheduled for July 12. 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. Meme Eberspacher, Dunlaps niece, was at his bedside the night that Dunlap died. First published on Wed 6 Jul 2022 10.36 EDT. And much like E.W. She showed Denver7 the container that she was given. They cut him up in pieces and sent them all over the place.. The couple got dressed up in matching outfits and brought a special camera. Thats when E.W. 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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. and Cavanagh, Reh had an immensely difficult time reaching the Kents, the phone ringing unanswered for weeks. Details uncovered in the FBI investigation were shared with her. Few state laws provide any oversight. Its sickening, said Hanson. By: Tony Kovaleski Posted at 6:00 PM, Oct 31, 2019 Staci Kent arrived to one of those death scenes without a body bag, which spurred an argument with authorities, the indictment notes. Staci Kent, however, wouldnt let them see the baby, Reh said. In cases like Schum's, where a family did agree to donate a body part, Hess sold more than she had permission to. The next year,. 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. 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. The report also noted that a former employee at Sunset Mesa was troubled by Hess mother, who was responsible for embalming and dismembering the dead bodies. ", Tina Shanon, whose mother was dismembered against her will, told the court, "I've worn many masks to cover the pain. There are currently 350 funeral home listings for the state of Colorado and we provide all the cemetery information for the state as well. 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. DENVER -- To many it is simply the unthinkable. You are looking at how to make money.. The couple got dressed up in matching outfits and brought a special camera. Jacque Hampson spent a year working as Hesss personal assistant. ), 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. 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 focus and extent of the federal probe into the Hess operation is unclear, and the FBI also declined to comment. Separate from the FBI inquiry, Reuters has learned that Colorado state funeral regulators are investigating Hesss funeral home, Sunset Mesa. The article also tells about how Sunset Mesa Funeral Home handled some services free of charge. After reading the states suspension order this week, two women told The Denver Post that the circumstances surrounding E.W. sound eerily familiar. 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. 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. 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. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. Burg and Teselles law firm is currently suing body brokers in both Colorado and Arizona. Her father, Alan Koch, ran the crematory, Hess said. 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. 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. These people deserve to know why what was done to them was done to them. Sunset Mesa, like all other funeral homes in Colorado, is required by state law to have a death certificate filed with the vital records office before obtaining a disposition permit. 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. The NBC10 Investigators found bodies inside an unlicensed funeral home in Chester, Pennsylvania. 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. 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. A price quote Hess sent to an Arizona medical training lab in 2016 offered torsos for $1,000 each. Now the women wonder how many others might have had the same experience. The Daily Sentinel reports that Megan Hess faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison after entering the plea Tuesday in Grand Junction. Kent operates six funeral homes in the states high country, which also include Buena Vista, Fairplay, Idaho Springs, and Silverthorne. Im not interested. On Oct. 13, the state shut down both the Gypsum operation and . 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. Megan Hess, a former Colorado funeral home director, chopped up over 500 . Mabry said Koch told him the glass eye couldnt be removed after Dunlaps head was severed, embalmed and shipped to researchers. Pettyjohn now lives with the memory of what happened to the body of her 26-year-old son, Brian. 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. A state investigation by the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance now focuses on a Memphis funeral home that's also the focus of a Netflix reality show. 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. As she mourned the loss of her son, Cavanagh was referred to the Kent Funeral Home in Gypsum to do the cremation. 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. Specifics of the scope of theFBI investigation are unclear. 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 body was identified by fingerprints as Victor Akubuo, 42, from Southern . There is even more money to be made in dissecting those bodies and selling the parts. 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. Donating bodies, selling the parts: Frequently asked questions. 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. Seeing how this chapter is opening up again is incredible, its unbelievable. 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. 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. 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. Bailey-Kent Funeral Home, pictured at left, is one of two funeral homes owned by Shannon Kent now under criminal investigation. E.W. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Reuters provides business, financial, national and international news to professionals via desktop terminals, the world's media organizations, industry events and directly to consumers. Non-compete agreements, Customer Experience, Community Engagement. According to Reuters Sunset Mesa Funeral Home had seen their call volume increase from 59 in 2015 to 128 in 2017. The body was identified as that of 42 . Paul Hawthorne, Getty Images. I said I dont want to hear anymore.. 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. I go to sleep with the visions of him being dismembered with a power saw, said Ruthie Pettyjohn, whose sons body parts were allegedly sold. I'll never be OK.". heres a recap of our months top stories, Carriage Services reports Services and Revenue drops in 2022. This content was originally published here. 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. The probe into the coroners funeral homes started back in February, after a client complained to the Lake County Sheriffs Office about the handling of human remains. 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. 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 Further, the van was holding two other bodies that needed to be removed.. A Colorado funeral home operator accused of illegally selling body parts and giving clients fake ashes has been sentenced to 20 years in prison. Koch said she had sold a different batch a year prior, and they took the whole family to Disneyland in California on the gold that they cashed in, Escher said. It is also the only state that doesnt license funeral directors. . 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. All rights reserved. Finally Reh and her boyfriend went to the funeral home with the expectation that they would see their baby. Drop us a note at tips@coloradosun.com. 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. Hess' mother, Shirley Koch, has also been indicted. Shannon and Staci Kent, 45, of Leadville were charged on Friday with attempted tampering with a deceased human body. parents are now under investigation by the FBI. POCATELLO, Idaho A Pocatello funeral home under investigation by the Idaho Board of Morticians has had its licenses revoked. The Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors and Donor Services building in Montrose, Colorado, U.S., December 16, 2017. 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. After receiving the cremains, E.W. The federal inquiry began several months ago, shortly after Reuters interviewed a half-dozen workers who formerly worked for Hess. A former Colorado funeral home operator has pleaded guilty to stealing and then selling hundreds of human bodies or body parts to people who were buying the remains for scientific, medical or . Other charges against Hess will . Kent also still faces second-degree official misconduct charges stemming from a September 2019 grand jury indictment in the Fifth Judicial District. Records from the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies showthis was not the first time Kent has been in the crosshairs of state regulators. did not receive a contract for funeral services, and only received the cremains after several calls to Kent, the order states. A few days later, she was able to pick up the cremains, but like E.W., Cavanagh received no paperwork. Twenty-six victims described their horror at discovering what had happened to their loved ones. Thank you, she said before ending the call. 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. 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. She has been told parts of her husbands body were sold on the world-wide market. 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. 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 arrested in 2020 and charged with six counts of mail fraud and three counts of illegal transportation of hazardous materials. did not receive a contract for funeral services, and only received the cremains after several calls to Kent, the order states. Body brokers sometimes market their services using language that could mislead prospective donors into believing the broker handles organ donations. Instead of paying the standard $695 cremation fee to . The price list is from an Arizona company shut down after an FBI raid five years ago. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. She told Contact7 Investigates that she heard bodies being dismembered. To betray that help, in a way that the businesses here are alleged to have done, brings nothing but a lack of credibility to all funeral service professionals. PUBLISHED 8:21 PM CT Apr. She operated a funeral home, Sunset Mesa, and a body parts entity, Donor Services, from the same building in Montrose, Colorado. No federal law prohibits the buying and selling of human body parts to be used in research and education. Colorado regulators shut down the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in 2018. The lawsuit claims the three sold torsos for $1,000, a pelvis with upper legs for $1,200. 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. 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. John Wayne Gacy House: Now. (REUTERS). Megan Hess, the former operator of a Montrose funeral home convicted of selling body parts without family consent, was . This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. She says Shirley Koch came to pick up his body. 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. Why Donor Services was unable to trace Dunlaps head remains unclear. Torsos are a popular specimen these days, she wrote. Its not something that can be fixed., Hancock was notified by the FBI that her husbands body parts had been sold without her consent. You could hear the machine going, she told Kovaleski. 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. 06, 2021. N.Y. Hess, 45, and her mother, Shirley Koch, operated the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose. However, on Thursday, Colorado police arrested Shannon and Staci Kent after finding a decaying corpse in a funeral home they previously operated. In Colorado, there are few regulations to catch shoddy behavior, such as illegitimate body trading, by mortuaries. 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. 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. Hess runs Sunset Mesa, a funeral home, and Donor Services, a body broker operation from the same building in Montrose. This compassionate help is the essence of what we do. The Daily Sentinel Megan Hess Authorities are now investigating. Family and friends are welcome to leave their condolences on this memorial page and share them with the family. It only investigates a funeral home if a complaint is filed, he said. Koch's central role was chopping up the bodies, court records show. Ive been violated, said Alena Holloman. 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. I went through a very bad crisis losing the baby, Cavanagh said. 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. Two months later, after hearing nothing from Hess, Schum went to Sunset Mesa to retrieve her friend's ashes. Leave a sympathy message to the family on the memorial page of Charles Lynch to pay them a last tribute. 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. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The funeral home's owners, Megan Hess, 43, and her mother . Emmanuel Macron shared his vision of a renewed partnership with Africa in which it stands equal with France, as he concluded a tour where he has sought to dispel France's image as an arrogant former colonial power whilst bidding for future influence. Buyers ranged from educators and scientists to individuals in the medical industry. Catch up on the days top five stories every weekday afternoon. There, authorities also found dried bodily fluid on surgical equipment, the metal preparation table, and the floor. Legal Statement. Her 69-year-old mother, Shirley Koch, also pleaded guilty to fraud and was sentenced to 15 years. 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.. A woman in Colorado has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for illegally selling body parts. 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. In Colorado and most other states, it's legal for funeral homes to sell items taken from corpses, including the gold found in teeth. All quotes delayed a minimum of 15 minutes. 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. The conflict of interest of having a side business in body parts just leads to problems,Steve Palmer, a funeral director in Cottonwood, Ariz., and former member of the policy board at the National Funeral Directors Association, said. In reality, Burg added, they are just trying to get those bodies free and then they are going to chop them up themselves in parts and make money off the bodies.. (If they've been left standing. A Colorado funeral home is accused of victimizing families after claims that it secretly sold body parts in the hours after death. At Donor Services, her body parts business, Hess can generate a greater return on the dead, a different price list reviewed by Reuters showed. They are struggling with claims she created a product with a power saw and angry that she ultimately profited from the sale of arms, heads legs, torsos even whole bodies. Legal Statement. The transfers were done through Sunset Mesa Funeral Foundation and Donor Services, authorities said. 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. They both plan to file complaints with the Department of Regulatory Affairs. It was kind of creepy.. He has served as Lake County coroner since 2012 and was reelected to a four-year term in November 2018. Shannon and Staci Kent did not respond to interview requests from The Denver Post. Market data provided by Factset. 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. Kent kept giving excuses, Cavanagh said. You've successfully subscribed to this newsletter! 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. As funeral directors, while we dont do everything perfect, we should have the best interest of our client families at heart. 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. He has served as Lake County coroner since 2012 and was reelected to a four-year term in November 2018. 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. Each edition is filled with exclusive news, analysis and other behind-the-scenes information you wont find anywhere else. The recent parade of early deaths has hit close to home. None of the former employees or associates Reuters interviewed worked directly for the body broker business. She said that one month she got about $40,000 from selling donated bodies. In 2020, authorities charged the two with mail fraud and illegal transportation of hazardous materials. 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. Reuters could not independently verify this figure. With a population of about 20,000, Montrose is a community surrounded by the beauty of the Rocky Mountains. Peck was given another six months of probation. Telling stories that matter in a dynamic, evolving state. I thought it was something that needs to be corrected," said state Senator Larry Crowder, one of the bills sponsors. Neither addressed the issue about the teeth.