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. 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. First published on Wed 6 Jul 2022 10.36 EDT. 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). A few days later, she was able to pick up the cremains, but like E.W., Cavanagh received no paperwork. MONTROSE, Colo. A Colorado funeral home is accused of victimizing families after claims that it secretly sold body parts in the hours after death. 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. Owner of funeral home under investigation had history of violations State Bans Coroner Shannon Kent From Private Business After Remains Pam Boyd/pboyd@vaildaily.com. Enter your email address to join 3,177 readers who subscribe to all Funeral Director articles. Megan Hess faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison after entering the plea Tuesday in Grand Junction, Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window), Members of the FBI, along with Montrose law enforcement investigate the Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors and Donor Services building Tuesday morning, February 6, 2018. 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. He has served as Lake County coroner since 2012 and was reelected to a four-year term in November 2018. It was kind of creepy.. They both plan to file complaints with the Department of Regulatory Affairs. 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. Below, find out where 25 of the most infamous crimes in history took place and what the locations are used for today. Former Colorado funeral home owner sentenced to 20 years for selling Hess, 45, and her mother, Shirley Koch, operated the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose. "This is the most emotionally draining case I have ever experienced on the bench," U.S. District Judge Christine M. Arguello said during Tuesday's sentencing hearing in Grand Junction, Colorado. Such a partnership may raise ethical concerns because it creates a financial incentive for the funeral home. N.Y. Megan Hess, a former Colorado funeral home director, chopped up over 500 . Escher said Koch, who embalmed and dismembered bodies, pulled teeth from some of the corpses to extract the gold in crowns or fillings. Colorado regulators shut down the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in 2018. Its sickening, said Hanson. Theyre united by the pain of believing they purchased cremation services for their loved ones, knowing they never agreed to let Hess dismember the bodies. A spokeswoman for Donate LifeAmerica said in an email that Hesss firm is not a federally designated organ procurement organization and has no permission to use the Donate Life brand. 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. Unfortunately, the attention wasn't focused on the town's natural beauty or tourism opportunities. 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 Officials also found the "post-cremation remains" of 16 people, according . She said that one month she got about $40,000 from selling donated bodies. Lynette "Diamond" Hardaway's Cause of Death Revealed 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. 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. Instead of paying the standard $695 cremation fee to Colorado Cremation, Hesss former cremation marketing business, Dunlap paid Hess $495 to take his body. He had been dismembered. The next year,. Shannon and Staci Kent, 45, of Leadville were charged on Friday with attempted tampering with a deceased human body. Andrew Scheid has been the director at . 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. MONTROSE, Colorado The Federal Bureau of Investigation is interviewing former employees of a funeral home whose owner runs a side business on the same premises selling human body parts. 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. 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 gruesome details of the case which authorities say included more than 500 victims drew international attention and shined a light on the . Hess runs Sunset Mesa, a funeral home, and Donor Services, a body broker operation from the same building in Montrose. 2023 FOX News Network, LLC. Eaton Family Funeral Home Ordway, Colorado - imortuary.com 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. 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. But two said Hess sometimes bragged about how lucrative it was to sell bodies and body parts. 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. Jeffersonville funeral home under investigation after police find No such degree exists in the United States for morticians, veteran funeral directors say. Copyright 2019 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. The Green Funeral. Hess' mother, Shirley Koch, has also been indicted. Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. But it provided an important public service, she said. The name of the state is derived form the Spanish . [the FBI told me] his head was sent to so and so. seattletimes.com: Colorado funeral home owner sentenced in body sales The charges defray the cost of picking up the deceased, she said in the 2016 interview. Colorado does not regulate body brokers. Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way. The lawsuit claims the three sold torsos for $1,000, a pelvis with upper legs for $1,200. 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. Colorado funeral home owner sentenced in body sales case Some former staff members of Sunset Mesa said they never heard Hess disclose to donors that the bodies would be sold for profit. Dunlap left one specific instruction: The glass eye that hed worn since a childhood accident should be removed and sent to his best friend. 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. They cut him up in pieces and sent them all over the place.. Colorado funeral home operators sentenced for selling body parts By submitting your email to receive this newsletter, you agree to our. Former Colorado funeral home owner sentenced to 20 yrs for selling body Megan Hess & Shirley Koch Sunset Mesa Funeral Home body parts scam 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. The body was identified by fingerprints as Victor Akubuo, 42, from Southern . She showed me her collection of gold teeth one day, said Escher, who helped manage a former cremation-marketing business owned by Hess. According to Reuters Sunset Mesa Funeral Home had seen their call volume increase from 59 in 2015 to 128 in 2017. Why their loved ones were stolen from them, and they were given back dry cement or sand and told it was loved ones ashes, said Teselle. E.W. Hancocks story started after her husband, Thomas, passed away. pleaded guilty to fraud in July after a . 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 owner has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison on charges of fraud and selling body parts without permission. Twenty-five of the brokers were for-profit corporations. When Schum hesitated, Hess said she would waive the cremation fee if Schum agreed to donate her friend's bladder to science. A woman is among more than five dozen family members currently suing the family that operated the now shut-down Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose, after finding out her husband's body parts had been sold without her consent. 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 . 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. Downard Funeral Home Under Investigation, ISU Involved Its a profit business. The recent parade of early deaths has hit close to home. 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 eye was never returned, said Eberspacher and Dunlaps friend, Ron Mabry. 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. 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. The New York Times, a far-left outlet, admitted in a report that Trump's rollback of a rule from President Barack Investigation into the allegations are ongoing with the Texas Funeral Services . 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. The state's Department of Regulatory Agencies. No one would pick up the phone. Family and friends are welcome to leave their condolences on this memorial page and share them with the family. One ex-employee, Kari Escher, said she was especially troubled by the practices of Hesss mother, Shirley Koch, who works at the facility. . Colorado funeral home owners sentenced to federal prison for selling The Unaffiliated is our twice-weekly newsletter on Colorado politics and policy. 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. Thats when E.W. Her revised online biography cited her high school degree and a love of veterinary medicine.. Arnold Roger Tesnow Obituary (1944 - 2023) | Colorado Springs, Colorado 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. After receiving the cremains, E.W. Ducks, 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. After reading the states suspension order this week, two women told The Denver Post that the circumstances surrounding E.W. sound eerily familiar. Her 69-year-old mother, Shirley Koch, also pleaded guilty to fraud and was sentenced to 15 years. She told Contact7 Investigates that she heard bodies being dismembered. This content was originally published here. With a population of about 20,000, Montrose is a community surrounded by the beauty of the Rocky Mountains. She did. Colorado Funeral Homes. At the nursing home, Eberspacher said she reminded Koch that the glass eye was supposed to be returned and suggested it be popped out there. The body was identified as that of 42 . Copyright 2019 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. 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. I didnt believe in depression until I lost my baby, Cavanagh said. DENVER, Colorado - 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 . Subscribe today to see what all the buzz is about. In cases like Schum's, where a family did agree to donate a body part, Hess sold more than she had permission to. 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. Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information. A funeral home in Crapaud, Prince Edward Island is under RCMP investigation for allegations of financial irregularities. ", Funeral home remains under federal investigation. 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. 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. Telling stories that matter in a dynamic, evolving state. The other nine were structured as nonprofits, including Donor Services the only broker Reuters could find that still doubles as a funeral home. Few state laws provide any oversight. Prosecutors recommended a sentence for Hess of 12 to 15 years. Kent also operates funeral homes in Silverthorne, Idaho Springs, Fairplay and Buena Vista. In at least dozens of instances, Hess and Koch did not follow family wishes, and neither discussed nor obtained authorization for Donor Services to transfer decedents' bodies or . Crapaud funeral home being investigated for allegations of financial It comes on the heels of a law passed in 2020 that. Megan Hess, 46, pleaded guilty to fraud in July. One of Hesss donors was Rex Dunlap, a frugal Coloradan battling brain cancer. According to theDenver Post, prosecutors reached a plea agreement with Hess this year regarding a 2020 indictment against her and her mother. Colorado woman sentenced to 20 years for stealing, selling body parts According to Reuters Sunset Mesa Funeral Home had seen their call volume increase from 59 in 2015 to 128 in 2017. 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. 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.
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