A mother and daughter who ran a funeral home will spend more than a decade in prison after being accused of chopping up corpses, illegally selling body parts, and giving fake ashes to distraught family members.
Megan Hess, age 46, was sentenced to 20 years in prison after earlier pleading guilty to one count of mail fraud and aiding and abetting.
Hess' mother, 69-year-old Shirley Koch, was also sentenced to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to the same charges.
FBI Denver Acting Special Agent in Charge Leonard Carollo said the pair betrayed the trust of hundreds of victims and "mutilated" their loved ones.
"The women disrespected the wishes of the grieving victims and degraded the bodies of their family members to sell them for profit. These two criminals continued in their atrocities for years, showing no remorse or contrition even after they were exposed," Carollo said in a statement. "Nothing can guarantee solace for the victims or repair the damage done, but perhaps this sentence can mark the end of a horrible chapter in their lives."
The federal case was triggered by a 2016-2018 Reuters investigative series about the sale of body parts in the United States. The pair operated the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose, Colorado, and allegedly dissected 560 corpses, Reuters reported.
According to the plea agreement, from 2010 through 2018, Hess and others stole the bodies or body parts of hundreds of victims and then sold those remains through body broker services to clients purchasing them for scientific, medical, or educational purposes.
Prosecutors said Hess would frequently meet with victims seeking cremation services for themselves or their loved ones who had died, and arranged to provide those services at a cost of $1,000 or more. But authorities say the cremations never took place. Instead, Hess and others would harvest body parts or prepare entire bodies for sale in body broker services, according to the Colorado Department of Justice.
Koch was also involved in meeting with families seeking cremation services. In many instances, authorities say Koch and Hess neither discussed nor obtained authorization for the donation of bodies or body parts. In other instances, the topic of donation was raised by Hess or Koch, and specifically rejected by the families.
"In such circumstances, despite lacking any authorization, Koch and Hess recovered body parts from, or otherwise prepared entire bodies of hundreds of decedents for body broker services," officials said.
In the few instances where families agreed to donation, Hess and Koch allegedly sold the remains of those decedents beyond what was authorized by the family, which was often limited to small tissue samples, tumors, or portions of skin.
"Hess and Koch also delivered cremains to families with the representation that the cremains were that of the deceased when, frequently, that was not the case," officials said.
More than 200 families received cremated ashes from bins mixed with the remains of different cadavers, Reuters reported.
According to the plea agreements, Hess and Koch would also ship bodies and body parts that tested positive for, or belonging to people who had died from, infectious diseases, including Hepatitis B and C, and HIV, after certifying to buyers that the remains were disease free. These shipments would be through the mail or on commercial air flights, in violation of Department of Transportation regulations regarding the transportation of hazardous materials.
A victim restitution hearing is scheduled for March, CBS News reported.
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