The Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors and Donor Services building in Montrose, Colorado, U.S., December 16, 2017. Another alleged victim said her mothers body was desecrated. 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. This all began when a severely decomposed body was reported by a state health inspector. Like many, Hanson found out about her son Frederick during a phone call from an FBI agent. . More Reuters investigations and long-form narratives, Got a confidential news tip? When Schum hesitated, Hess said she would waive the cremation fee if Schum agreed to donate her friend's bladder to science. The startling discovery led to a further investigation of oversight in the funeral industry. Authorities are now investigating. A woman in Colorado has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for illegally selling body parts. Burg and Teselles law firm is currently suing body brokers in both Colorado and Arizona. and Cavanagh, Reh had an immensely difficult time reaching the Kents, the phone ringing unanswered for weeks. 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. Reuters, the news and media division of Thomson Reuters, is the worlds largest multimedia news provider, reaching billions of people worldwide every day. It is the only state in the country that does not license funeral home and. DALLAS The Texas Funeral Service Commission says it has opened an investigation into allegations of the mishandling of corpses at one of the most high-profile mortuaries in the state. The Unaffiliated is our twice-weekly newsletter on Colorado politics and policy. A Colorado funeral home operator who was accused of selling and stealing body parts pleaded guilty to mail fraud on Tuesday, the US justice department . According to Jeffersonville Police Major Isaac Parker, the department began its investigation of the Lankford Funeral Home and Family Center in Jeffersonville on Friday. (If they've been left standing. 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. The lawsuit claims the three sold torsos for $1,000, a pelvis with upper legs for $1,200. 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. The conflict of interest of having a side business in body parts just leads to problems, said Steve Palmer, a funeral director in Cottonwood, Arizona, and former member of the policy board at the National Funeral Directors Association. "Hess and Koch's conduct caused immense emotional pain for the families and next of kin.". She said that one month she got about $40,000 from selling donated bodies. I know these are not his ashes because his body parts went all over the country, Hanson said. Fo 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. 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 New York Times, a far-left outlet, admitted in a report that Trump's rollback of a rule from President Barack It comes on the heels of a law passed in 2020 that. (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 parts. The Bailey-Kent Funeral Home was the only option given to her for cremation under a certain weight, she said. He covers everything from stolen art and towing to mobile homes and quirky stories that defy category. Take a look at some of Colorado's most notorious crimes. 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. Pam Boyd/pboyd@vaildaily.com. 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. First published on Wed 6 Jul 2022 10.36 EDT. 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've successfully subscribed to this newsletter! In 2009, Hess also created a nonprofit called Sunset Mesa Funeral Foundation, d/b/a Donor Services, a body broker service operated out of the same location as SMFD. A change of plea hearing for Koch is scheduled for July 12. Records from the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies showthis was not the first time Kent has been in the crosshairs of state regulators. Unfortunately, the attention wasn't focused on the town's natural beauty or tourism opportunities. felt they were too heavy to be those of a stillborn child, and submitted them for analysis. The Bailey-Kent Funeral Home was the only option given to her for cremation under a certain weight, she said. After receiving the cremains, E.W. Further, the van was holding two other bodies that needed to be removed.. The charges defray the cost of picking up the deceased, she said in the 2016 interview. 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. A human head and spine sold for $850, while a full pelvis all the way to the toes priced out at $2,850. The attorney, Carol Viner, asked Reuters to refrain from contacting Hess employees for any reason.. 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 And as of. SCI 4Q Revenue and Year End Revenue lower than comparables, Funeral Director Daily, The business of Funeral Care. 2023 FOX News Network, LLC. This compassionate help is the essence of what we do. 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. 2023 FOX News Network, LLC. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper. After reading the states suspension order this week, two women told The Denver Post that the circumstances surrounding E.W. sound eerily familiar. 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. Staci Kent arrived to one of those death scenes without a body bag, which spurred an argument with authorities, the indictment notes. Most brokers who sell body parts offer to cremate part of the donors body for free. On Oct. 13, the state shut down both the Gypsum operation and . 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. She has been told parts of her husbands body were sold on the world-wide market. Megan Hess, the former operator of a Montrose funeral home convicted of selling body parts without family consent, was . 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. It was kind of creepy.. In Colorado and most other states, it also is legal for funeral homes to sell items recovered from dead bodies, such as gold dental work. The details of the plea agreement are unknown, but a trial for Hess' mother is still on track to proceed. 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. The gruesome details of the case which authorities say included more than 500 victims drew international attention and shined a light on the . Denver attorneys Mike Berg and Dave Teselle now represent more than 50 families who claim Hess and her parents victimized them. 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. E.W. 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. The legislation has support from the state's largest trade association for funeral homes, the Colorado Funeral Directors Association. Twenty-five of the brokers were for-profit corporations. A price quote Hess sent to an Arizona medical training lab in 2016 offered torsos for $1,000 each. Pictures show bodies stacked in hallways and unrefrigerated rental trucks. A judge sentenced a Colorado funeral-home owner who carved up corpses and sold parts of them without families' permission to 20 years in prison on Tuesday, according to the Department of Justice. Email address: Colorado Funeral Home / Body Broker Continues Under Investigation, Acquisitions, buy-outs, creative ideas. 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. 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. 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. 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. She did. I went through a very bad crisis losing the baby, Cavanagh said. Drop us a note at tips@coloradosun.com. He had been dismembered. (McGovern said no industry regulated by the Division of Professions and Occupations has regulators assigned exclusively to it.) a contrarian view? Copyright 2019 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. 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. In 2020, authorities charged the two with mail fraud and illegal transportation of hazardous materials. When asked if it contained her husbands cremains, she said, I dont know.. But the business arrangement is highly unusual. Donating bodies, selling the parts: Frequently asked questions. Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information. After an extensive investigation into this and dozens of similar cases, federal prosecutors on Tuesday charged the owners of the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose, Colorado, on suspicion of illegally brokering the body parts of deceased individuals they were hired to cremate. Meme Eberspacher, Dunlaps niece, was at his bedside the night that Dunlap died. Colorado Funeral Homes. ", Funeral home remains under federal investigation. 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. 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. Hiring funeral directors: Do you look for IQ or EQ? Its tentacles go throughout not only the country but the world.. 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. The Donor Services brochure was criticized as deceptive by two major U.S. organ donation groups after Reuters shared it with them. Funeral homes are required to register with the state, but spokesman Rasizer said the regulatory affairs department is not authorized to inspect mortuaries. You are not looking at the full disposition (of a body). Could, Lake County coroner turns in resignation letter, State suspends operations of Leadville, Gypsum funeral homes, 3 BULLETS TO THE BACK: The striking silence around a police, Last Season Hunters Harvested the Most Bucks in 21 Years | Outdoor Life, Republicans are barring medical boards from punishing doctors who prescribe ivermectin: report | Salon.com, Mead High School student gets musical Make-A-Wish surprise, Bruce Cassidy Defends Tuukka Rask After Tough Showing Vs. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. It is also the only state that doesnt license funeral directors. Specifics of the scope of theFBI investigation are unclear. This comes after a dozen . We did not provide our messaging to be repurposed in this brochure, and are following up, said spokeswoman Erin Dolin. Connie Hansons sons body parts were also allegedly sold. 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. Before referring questions to a lawyer, Hess spoke extensively with Reuters about her body broker company. Hansons box included wires and what appear to be old batteries. 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. Legal Statement. Body snatcher, vile, pure evil, sociopath, are the words they used when asked to describe Hess. PUBLISHED 8:21 PM CT Apr. 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. Family and friends are welcome to leave their condolences on this memorial page and share them with the family. As a result, Peck and his funeral home were required to pay a $2,500 fine and $5,000 in investigative costs and attorney fees. Hess made donating a body online easy. POCATELLO, Idaho Police in Pocatello are investigating a local funeral home after they said a state health inspector contacted them about the business and a badly decomposed body was found. Its a profit business. She operated a funeral home, Sunset Mesa, and a body parts entity, Donor Services, from the same building in Montrose, Colorado. 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. 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. And much like E.W. Colorado regulators shut Sunset Mesa down in February 2018, KMGH-TV reported. Shannon and Staci Kent did not respond to interview requests from The Denver Post. 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 is tentatively set to be sentenced in January. He has served as Lake County coroner since 2012 and was reelected to a four-year term in November 2018. Kent also operates funeral homes in Silverthorne, Idaho Springs, Fairplay and Buena Vista. There are currently 350 funeral home listings for the state of Colorado and we provide all the cemetery information for the state as well. In Colorado, the states organ donation program, Donor Alliance, said Hesss marketing language could be confusing to people.. The body was identified by fingerprints as Victor Akubuo, 42, from Southern . by Mr. Leadville | Oct 26, 2020 | Leadville News. 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. Chantal Reh, an Avon resident, went through a similar experience when she suffered a stillborn birth in August 2018. Prior to the raid, the cost of purchasing an arm and shoulder was $600. According to Reuters Sunset Mesa Funeral Home had seen their call volume increase from 59 in 2015 to 128 in 2017. The owner of the funeral homes, Shannon Kent, is also Lake Countys coroner. 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. 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. No federal law prohibits the buying and selling of human body parts to be used in research and education. 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. A few days later, she was able to pick up the cremains, but like E.W., Cavanagh received no paperwork. 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. 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. Last August, police received a complaint that funds provided to. Other charges against Hess will be dropped under a plea agreement, the Sentinel said. It can't be fixed, said Hancock. 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. 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. Further, the van was holding two other bodies that needed to be removed.. They both plan to file complaints with the Department of Regulatory Affairs. 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. But two said Hess sometimes bragged about how lucrative it was to sell bodies and body parts. 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 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. N.Y. Finally Reh and her boyfriend went to the funeral home with the expectation that they would see their baby. Her 69-year-old mother, Shirley Koch, also pleaded guilty to fraud and was sentenced to 15 years. [the FBI told me] his head was sent to so and so. 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. Forty-fifth President and leading 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump has been exonerated of false claims from the radical left and the Biden administration that Trump was responsible for the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, due to a rollback. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Why Donor Services was unable to trace Dunlaps head remains unclear. No one would pick up the phone. Megan Hess, the owner of Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose, and her parents are now under investigation by the FBI. This is a way we can eliminate or alleviate the black market on body parts, Crowder added. . The Denver attorney is referring to the limited and nonexistent regulation nationwide and worldwide regarding the procurement and selling of bodies and body parts. 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. The Lake County Sheriffs Office confirmed an active criminal investigation is underway. I told them it didnt make sense, Mabry said. Im not interested. The conflict of interest of having a side business in body parts just leads to problems. You could hear the machine going, she told Kovaleski. 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. When Reuters visited her facility in 2016, Hess said Donor Services represented just 15 percent or so of her total business. Bailey-Kent Funeral Home, pictured at left, is one of two funeral homes owned by Shannon Kent now under criminal investigation. A Colorado funeral home is accused of victimizing families after claims that it secretly sold body parts in the hours after death. Her funeral home site listed her credentials, including a PhD in mortuary science. Megan Hess, 46, pleaded guilty to fraud in July. 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. 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 . Suppliers of transplant tissue must obtain federal recognition and operate as charities. At the time of publication, no charges had been filed against the coroner, though Colorado has suspended the business licenses for both funeral homes. The Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors and Donor Services building in Montrose, Colorado, U.S., December 16, 2017. Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way. 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. SENTINEL FILE PHOTO Sisters Layna and Janet Hutt hold photos of their father, Raymond Hutt, who died in 2016 at the age of 96. In their filing, prosecutors stressed the "macabre nature" of Hess' scheme and described it as one of the most significant body parts cases in recent U.S. history. Two months later, after hearing nothing from Hess, Schum went to Sunset Mesa to retrieve her friend's ashes. It is illegal to buy or sell organs such as hearts, kidneys and tendons for transplant. 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. Access unmatched financial data, news and content in a highly-customised workflow experience on desktop, web and mobile. It only investigates a funeral home if a complaint is filed, he said. Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors of Montrose handled the funeral . High Country News reports that, duringthe initial investigation, the FBI tested 128 samples of remains tied to Sunset Mesa. Colorado does not regulate body brokers. Screen for heightened risk individual and entities globally to help uncover hidden risks in business relationships and human networks. Colorado regulators have shut down the funeral home. More by The Associated Press, Got a story tip? According to the Johnstown, N.Y. Police Department, Brian M. Barnett, 35, who owns the since-shuttered Ehle . The article also tells about how Sunset Mesa Funeral Home handled some services free of charge. Investigators discovered 31 dead bodies, some of which were in advanced stages of decomposition. They were affiliated with her funeral business. Her revised online biography cited her high school degree and a love of veterinary medicine.. . 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. She says Shirley Koch came to pick up his body. My mother and my mothers body has been desecrated.. Twenty-six victims described their horror at discovering what had happened to their loved ones. Thank you for thinking of me.. 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. The Lake County Sheriffs Office confirmed an active criminal investigation is underway. Thats when E.W. The focus and extent of the federal probe into the Hess operation is unclear, and the FBI also declined to comment. The Green Funeral. According to Reuters Sunset Mesa Funeral Home had seen their call volume increase from 59 in 2015 to 128 in 2017. Kent kept giving excuses, Cavanagh said. 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. They both plan to file complaints with the Department of Regulatory Affairs. or redistributed. Investigation into the allegations are ongoing with the Texas Funeral Services . Hess runs Sunset Mesa, a funeral home, and Donor Services, a body broker operation from the same building in Montrose. Weeks passed before Hess told him that Donor Services couldnt retrieve the glass eye because the company couldnt locate the researcher who received Dunlaps head, Mabry said. Thousands more patients could benefit from life saving and healing eye and tissue donations.. Holloman now deals with the guilt of knowing details of what happened to her moms body. . The owner of the funeral homes, Shannon Kent, is also Lake Countys coroner. 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. In court on Tuesday, Hess declined to speak to the judge. I didnt believe in depression until I lost my baby, Cavanagh said. Koch's central role was chopping up the bodies, court records show. 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 few days later, she was able to pick up the cremains, but like E.W., Cavanagh received no paperwork. felt they were too heavy to be those of a stillborn child, and submitted them for analysis. 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. Sam Tabachnik is a roving reporter for The Denver Post, focusing on stories outside metro Denver. The couple got dressed up in matching outfits and brought a special camera. Hancock is one of more than five dozen family members currently suing the family that operated the now shut-down Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose. 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. This whole situation, oh, I thought it was part of my past.. Family and friends can send flowers and condolences in memory of the loved one. 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. 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.. Market data provided by Factset. I see his body parts floating in space and I keep trying to grab them and put him back and I can't!