The recent parade of early deaths has hit close to home. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. After receiving the cremains, E.W. One ex-employee, Kari Escher, said she was especially troubled by the practices of Hesss mother, Shirley Koch, who works at the facility. The home, located at 8215 W. Summerdale Ave., was sold for just shy of $400,000 in May 2021. This comes after a dozen . Feb 4, 2023, 5:26 PM SGT. 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. Family and friends are welcome to leave their condolences on this memorial page and share them with the family. Shannon and Staci Kent did not respond to interview requests from The Denver Post. You are looking at how to make money.. 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. Leave a sympathy message to the family on the memorial page of Charles Lynch to pay them a last tribute. I said I dont want to hear anymore.. 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. Body brokers sometimes market their services using language that could mislead prospective donors into believing the broker handles organ donations. Unfortunately, the attention wasn't focused on the town's natural beauty or tourism opportunities. Meme Eberspacher, Dunlaps niece, was at his bedside the night that Dunlap died. Learn more about Colorado true crime stories in the gallery below. Funeral homes owned by a Colorado coroner under investigation following The judge ordered that Hess and Koch be sent to prison immediately. Connie Hansons sons body parts were also allegedly sold. On March 17, the unsealed indictment revealed that this donor services business would harvest the human remains and then sell them, illegally and without the families' knowledge. 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. Donor Services has circulated a brochure that reads: Be a hero. Body snatcher, vile, pure evil, sociopath, are the words they used when asked to describe Hess. 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. State suspends operations of Leadville, Gypsum funeral homes 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. (REUTERS). 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. They were arrested in 2020 and charged with six counts of mail fraud and three counts of illegal transportation of hazardous materials. Hess, 45, and her mother, Shirley Koch, operated the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose. The transfers were done through Sunset Mesa Funeral Foundation and Donor Services, authorities said. 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. Colorado funeral home owner sentenced in body sales case TX Funeral Service Commission Investigating Golden Gate - Spectrum News No federal law prohibits the buying and selling of human body parts to be used in research and education. 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. Hess is tentatively set to be sentenced in January. A few days later, she was able to pick up the cremains, but like E.W., Cavanagh received no paperwork. 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. According to Reuters Sunset Mesa Funeral Home had seen their call volume increase from 59 in 2015 to 128 in 2017. Im not interested. 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. She mentioned on several occasions about how much money she would be getting per month, which blew my mind, said Jennifer Henderson, a former floral designer for Sunset Mesa. Owner of funeral home under investigation had history of violations Thats when E.W. 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. 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. 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. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, 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. No such degree exists in the United States for morticians, veteran funeral directors say. Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. Colo. funeral home accused of doubling as body parts broker - KMGH 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. We were greeted at the door by her father, who told us to leave the property. Fells called running such a multifaceted operation a new frontier., Through the attorney, Hess declined to comment for this story and didnt address questions about the FBI probe, her business practices, and the allegations by former employees. As you likely know by now, Diamond of the famous 'Diamond and Silk' sister duo, has passed away at the young age of only 51. Below, find out where 25 of the most infamous crimes in history took place and what the locations are used for today. Few state laws provide any oversight. 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. The 20-year term was the maximum allowed under law. 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 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 owner of the funeral homes, Shannon Kent, is also Lake Countys coroner. U.S. District Judge Christine M. Arguello on Tuesday sentenced Hess, 46, to 20 years in prison the maximum allowable for her role in a nearly decade-long scheme to sell body parts without the. Colorado does not regulate body brokers. A Colorado funeral home is accused of victimizing families after claims that it secretly sold body parts in the hours after death. 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. There is even more money to be made in dissecting those bodies and selling the parts. Seeing how this chapter is opening up again is incredible, its unbelievable. 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. did not receive a contract for funeral services, and only received the cremains after several calls to Kent, the order states. Kent kept giving excuses, Cavanagh said. 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 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. One of Hesss donors was Rex Dunlap, a frugal Coloradan battling brain cancer. Pettyjohn now lives with the memory of what happened to the body of her 26-year-old son, Brian. Former Employee Accuses Dallas Funeral Home of Misconduct But it provided an important public service, she said. Subscribe to Funeral Director Daily 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. 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. Colorado regulators shut Sunset Mesa down in February 2018, KMGH-TV reported. 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. 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. Former Colorado funeral home owner sentenced to 20 yrs for selling body 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. By: Tony Kovaleski Posted at 6:00 PM, Oct 31, 2019 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. 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. . Thousands more patients could benefit from life saving and healing eye and tissue donations.. According to Jeffersonville Police Major Isaac Parker, the department began its investigation of the Lankford Funeral Home and Family Center in Jeffersonville on Friday. You are not looking at the full disposition (of a body). I know these are not his ashes because his body parts went all over the country, Hanson said. . Investigators discovered 31 dead bodies, some of which were in advanced stages of decomposition. The federal case was triggered by a 2016-2018 Reuters investigative series about the sale of body parts in the United States, a virtually unregulated industry. A human head and spine sold for $850, while a full pelvis all the way to the toes priced out at $2,850. Jacque Hampson spent a year working as Hesss personal assistant. 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. Such a partnership may raise ethical concerns because it creates a financial incentive for the funeral home. ", Funeral home remains under federal investigation. Instead, the media was interested in the dark history behind the town's funeral home, Sunset Mesa. 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. Telling stories that matter in a dynamic, evolving state. 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. Twenty-six victims described their horror at discovering what had happened to their loved ones. did not receive a contract for funeral services, and only received the cremains after several calls to Kent, the order states. Now its possible its not my baby in the urn, Reh said. Non-compete agreements, Customer Experience, Community Engagement. Funeral homes are required to register with the state, but spokesman Rasizer said the regulatory affairs department is not authorized to inspect mortuaries. We did not provide our messaging to be repurposed in this brochure, and are following up, said spokeswoman Erin Dolin. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Hoping to get answers, Denver7 visited Hess home in Montrose. There is also evidence of Donor Services shipping at least 26 boxes containing body parts to various parts of the world in 2016 according to evidence that has been recovered. Andrew Scheid has been the director at . Six people were killed, including federal District Court Chief Judge John Roll; Gabe Zimmerman, one of Giffords's staffers; and a 9-year-old girl . Staci Kent arrived to one of those death scenes without a body bag, which spurred an argument with authorities, the indictment notes. E.W. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. In Colorado, there are few regulations to catch shoddy behavior, such as illegitimate body trading, by mortuaries. Copyright 2019 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. The other nine were structured as nonprofits, including Donor Services the only broker Reuters could find that still doubles as a funeral home. And it is not against the law to operate a so-called body broker firm from the same facility that houses a funeral home and crematory. And as of. They desecrated his little body, she said. In mid-March, Kent received a letter of admonition" from the Office of Funeral Home and Crematory Registration after unembalmed, unrefrigerated remains were found in the Gypsum funeral home over 24 hours after the person had died. ", Tina Shanon, whose mother was dismembered against her will, told the court, "I've worn many masks to cover the pain. 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. 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. Golden Gate's owner denies all allegations. (If they've been left standing. Authorities also uncovered multiple refrigerated bodies which were wrapped in sheets or blankets but did not have any tags or paperwork identifying them. 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 parts without permission. Two months later, after hearing nothing from Hess, Schum went to Sunset Mesa to retrieve her friend's ashes. Megan Hess, the former operator of a Montrose funeral home convicted of selling body parts without family consent, was . Take a look at some of Colorado's most notorious crimes. 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 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. It can't be fixed, said Hancock. Chantal Reh, an Avon resident, went through a similar experience when she suffered a stillborn birth in August 2018. 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. And much like E.W. In an interview in 2016, she described Donor Services as a small, family business. This compassionate help is the essence of what we do. However, there was more going on beneath the surface. There is also evidence of Donor Services shipping at least 26 boxes containing body parts to various parts of the world in 2016 according to evidence that has been recovered. 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.