And much like E.W. Funeral homes owned by a Colorado coroner under, Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Get to know all 17 Denver mayor candidates , Funeral homes owned by a Colorado coroner under investigation following discovery of unrefrigerated body, unlabeled cremains, Owners of Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors indicted for illegally selling human body parts, Former Montrose funeral home director accused of selling body parts loses state insurance license, This really has shattered me: Betrayal, anger, grief haunt victims of Colorado funeral home that sold loved ones body parts without permission, Denver weather: Strong winds and low humidity will elevate fire concerns Sunday, Vehicle owners can register for car theft deterrent program DenverTrack, Data breach of DPS computer servers affects all district employees, officials say, Colorado psychologists gain authority to prescribe mental health medication, Colorado property owners to face astronomical tax increases next year, After School Satan Club launching first Colorado chapter, but organizer promises "we are not devil worshippers", PHOTOS: Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band play Ball Arena in Denver, Colorado landlords say eviction-protection proposal could make dropping problem renters too hard, No more greasy pizza boxes, paper towels or takeout containers in Front Range compost bins come April 1, 5 can't-miss menus for Denver Restaurant Week, After teen's death, Denver East High students walk out to advocate for gun legislation, Boulder house where JonBenet Ramsey was found dead listed for sale for almost $7M, Metro Denver housing market crosses firmly into negative territory in February, Kiszla: With Brendan Rodgers down and out, Kris Bryant could become $182 million face of worst team in Rockies history, As Adderall shortage continues, DEA plans to limit some telemedicine prescriptions, House where JonBenet Ramsey was found dead listed for sale for almost $7M, Columbia University permanently drops SAT, ACT admissions requirement, The Waterbed Doctor: California retailer lays claim to retro bed with nearly 40 years of service, sales, Felonious Florida podcast: Missing teenage girl leads to several cases of child sex trafficking, Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information, 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. Connie Hansons sons body parts were also allegedly sold. . All they got was the urn and a death certificate no other paperwork. The FBI hired a lab to test the cremains given to the families, and they have determined the boxes of ash contain cement, sand and other non-human particles. 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. (Google). He had been dismembered. The recent parade of early deaths has hit close to home. Donating bodies, selling the parts: Frequently asked questions. (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. 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. 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. 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. What You Need To Know. You are looking at how to make money.. However, on Thursday, Colorado police arrested Shannon and Staci Kent after finding a decaying corpse in a funeral home they previously operated. The Lake County Sheriffs Office confirmed an active criminal investigation is underway. She has been told parts of her husbands body were sold on the world-wide market. 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. But no federal law governs the sale of cadavers or body parts for use in research or education. 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. 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 Instead of paying the standard $695 cremation fee to Colorado Cremation, Hesss former cremation marketing business, Dunlap paid Hess $495 to take his body. It comes on the heels of a law passed in 2020 that. At the focal point of the FBI probe: funeral director Megan Hess, who did not return Fox News request for a comment. The Green Funeral. felt they were too heavy to be those of a stillborn child, and submitted them for analysis. Records from the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies showthis was not the first time Kent has been in the crosshairs of state regulators. Body snatcher, vile, pure evil, sociopath, are the words they used when asked to describe Hess. "We don't even have a name for a crime this heinous. 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. A former employee has alleged misconduct regarding the disposal of the deceased at Golden Gate Funeral Home in Dallas. Peck was given another six months of probation. 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. 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. 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. Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information. 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. A pelvis with upper legs went for $1,200, heads for $500, a knee for $250, and a foot for $125, according to a 2013 Donor Services price list reviewed by Reuters. Chantal Reh, an Avon resident, went through a similar experience when she suffered a stillborn birth in August 2018. by Mr. Leadville | Oct 26, 2020 | Leadville News. John Wayne Gacy House: Now. By: Tony Kovaleski Posted at 6:00 PM, Oct 31, 2019 Now its possible its not my baby in the urn, Reh said. 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. At Sunset Mesa, Hess charged $1,995 for a simple burial and $695 for a basic cremation, according to price lists reviewed by Reuters. The industry leader for online information for tax, accounting and finance professionals. 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. 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. and Cavanagh, Reh had an immensely difficult time reaching the Kents, the phone ringing unanswered for weeks. GYPSUM The operating license for Kent Funeral Home in Gypsum has been summarily suspended by the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies following an investigation that revealed disturbing conditions at an associated funeral home in Leadville. Contact7 Chief Investigative Reporter Tony Kovaleski traveled to Montrose and talked to more than a half dozen family members now victims about what they describe as a scheme to profit from their pain. 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. A Colorado funeral home is accused of victimizing families after claims that it secretly sold body parts in the hours after death. There are no ethics there when you do that. Colorado Funeral Homes. 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. Megan Hess, the owner of Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose, and her parents are now under investigation by the FBI. A price quote Hess sent to an Arizona medical training lab in 2016 offered torsos for $1,000 each. The news agency had also sent written questions to Hess and her attorney about Kochs alleged handling of gold teeth. The body was identified by fingerprints as Victor Akubuo, 42, from Southern . (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. . ", Funeral home remains under federal investigation. 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 . 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.. During her speech at Diamond's funeral, her partner in crime, Silk, implied that there was foul play involved in her death and urged for an investigation. Market data provided by Factset. 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. No one returned her voicemails. 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. All they got was the urn and a death certificate no other paperwork. 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. The other nine were structured as nonprofits, including Donor Services the only broker Reuters could find that still doubles as a funeral home. The details of the plea agreement are unknown, but a trial for Hess' mother is still on track to proceed. E.W. Its a community struggling to understand the stories and the accusations about what happened in the back room at Sunset Mesa. Reuters, the news and media division of Thomson Reuters, is the worlds largest multimedia news provider, reaching billions of people worldwide every day. found out the cremains contained ashes from an infant, but also long bone fragments of an older/larger adult individual and metal, according to the suspension order. The transfers were done through Sunset Mesa Funeral Foundation and Donor Services, authorities said. The scope of Sunset Mesa Funeral Home and Donor Services remains unclear at this time while investigators are trying to get a handle on that issue. But two said Hess sometimes bragged about how lucrative it was to sell bodies and body parts. Earlier this month, authorities from both Lake and Eagle counties encountered a strong odor of decomposition when they searched the Leadville funeral home, reads. 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. 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. Shannon and Staci Kent did not respond to interview requests from The Denver Post. The reality of body brokers profiting from the sale of body parts has made national and international headlines following government raids in Arizona and Colorado in recent years. Reuters could not independently verify this figure. The Daily Sentinel Megan Hess The Lake County Sheriffs Office confirmed an active criminal investigation is underway. The lawsuit estimates the three were making $40,000 a month from the sale of body parts. But days went by and she couldnt reach anyone. The lawsuit claims the three sold torsos for $1,000, a pelvis with upper legs for $1,200. Now the women wonder how many others might have had the same experience. Megan Hess, 46, pleaded guilty to fraud in July. In Colorado, the states organ donation program, Donor Alliance, said Hesss marketing language could be confusing to people.. Her revised online biography cited her high school degree and a love of veterinary medicine.. An Upstate New York funeral home proprietor is facing imminent criminal charges for allegedly keeping dead human bodies in "advanced states of decomposition" in his business and its detached garage, local officials announced Friday. It was kinda creepy., It is totally unregulated, said Burg.