Colorado funeral home director pleads guilty to selling body parts
A Colorado funeral home operator pleaded guilty on Tuesday to mail fraud charges for selling body parts from corpses while giving clients fake ashes.
Megan Hess, 45, who operated the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home, faces up to 20 years behind bars for the count of mail fraud. Prosecutors agreed to drop five additional counts of mail fraud and three counts of transporting hazardous material charges against her as part of the agreement, the Daily Sentinel reported.
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“I exceeded the scope of the consent, and I’m trying to make an effort to make it right,” she said during a federal court appearance, per the outlet.
Hess offered low rates to lure customers to her business so she could sell the corpses’ body parts for research between 2010 and 2018, according to court documents. She confessed to committing the crime in court.
In 2020, Hess was indicted alongside her mother, Shirley Koch, by a grand jury for the alleged scheme, which included forging signatures on key documents and misleading families about how the deceased would be treated at the funeral home.
They harvested heads, arms, legs, and more from the cadavers and gave families ashes from several other corpses while charging $1,000 for cremations, Fox Business reported. In exchange for body donations, they also offered free cremations, the outlet added.
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The duo sold bodies and parts of bodies that had infectious diseases, such as HIV, despite telling buyers that the corpses were free of disease, prosecutors said, per the Associated Press.
Hess is slated to face sentencing in January, and prosecutors have recommended she face 12 to 15 years in prison. Koch is scheduled for a hearing about a change of plea on July 12. Both Hess and Koch initially pleaded not guilty to the charges against them. Hess is out on bond.
