In February 2018, Lina Cavanagh lost her baby at an advanced stage of pregnancy a loss that took its toll on her, both physically and emotionally. The judge ordered that Hess and Koch be sent to prison immediately. In their filing, prosecutors stressed the "macabre nature" of Hess' scheme and described it as one of the most significant body parts cases in recent U.S. history. I go to sleep with the visions of him being dismembered with a power saw, said Ruthie Pettyjohn, whose sons body parts were allegedly sold. Suppliers of transplant tissue must obtain federal recognition and operate as charities. She was sold, embalmed and shipped out within just a few hours of her death, said Holloman. A change of plea hearing for Koch is scheduled for July 12. Jeffersonville funeral home under investigation after police find Kent also operates funeral homes in Silverthorne, Idaho Springs, Fairplay and Buena Vista. A few days later, she was able to pick up the cremains, but like E.W., Cavanagh received no paperwork. Megan Hess, 46, pleaded guilty to fraud in July. Colorado Funeral Home Caught Selling Bodies Intended For Cremation Emmanuel Macron shared his vision of a renewed partnership with Africa in which it stands equal with France, as he concluded a tour where he has sought to dispel France's image as an arrogant former colonial power whilst bidding for future influence. The Unaffiliated is our twice-weekly newsletter on Colorado politics and policy. It comes on the heels of a law passed in 2020 that. Officials also found the "post-cremation remains" of 16 people, according . 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 . The funeral home's owners, Megan Hess, 43, and her mother . MONTROSE, Colo. A Colorado funeral home is accused of victimizing families after claims that it secretly sold body parts in the hours after death. It only investigates a funeral home if a complaint is filed, he said. . Megan Hess, the owner of Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose, and her parents are now under investigation by the FBI. All quotes delayed a minimum of 15 minutes. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, Im not interested. I thought it was something that needs to be corrected," said state Senator Larry Crowder, one of the bills sponsors. 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. 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 . Reuters Investigates offers several ways to securely contact our reporters. Leave a sympathy message to the family on the memorial page of Charles Lynch to pay them a last tribute. The eye was never returned, said Eberspacher and Dunlaps friend, Ron Mabry. 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. They cut him up in pieces and sent them all over the place.. 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. . 'None of this happened the way you think it did' - High Country News Now its possible its not my baby in the urn, Reh said. . They both plan to file complaints with the Department of Regulatory Affairs. According to Reuters Sunset Mesa Funeral Home had seen their call volume increase from 59 in 2015 to 128 in 2017. A Colorado funeral home is under federal investigation over accusations it doubled as a body broker firm, buying and selling human body parts, a Reuters special report revealed Tuesday. Two months later, after hearing nothing from Hess, Schum went to Sunset Mesa to retrieve her friend's ashes. 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. Funeral home investigation: What to know about the discovery of 31 There, authorities also found dried bodily fluid on surgical equipment, the metal preparation table, and the floor. On January 8, 2011, U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords and 18 others were shot during a constituent meeting held in a supermarket parking lot in Casas Adobes, Arizona, in the Tucson metropolitan area. 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. Copyright 2019 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. With heavy hearts, we announce the death of Arnold Roger Tesnow (Colorado Springs, Colorado), born in Worth, Illinois, who passed away on February 25, 2023 at the age of 78. 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. 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. Other charges against Hess will . Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper. 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. No one would pick up the phone. Bailey-Kent Funeral Home, pictured at left, is one of two funeral homes owned by Shannon Kent now under criminal investigation. But days went by and she couldnt reach anyone. (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. Instead of paying the standard $695 cremation fee to Colorado Cremation, Hesss former cremation marketing business, Dunlap paid Hess $495 to take his body. Funeral homes owned by Lake County coroner under investigation 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. My mother and my mothers body has been desecrated.. You are looking at how to make money.. First published on Wed 6 Jul 2022 10.36 EDT. 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 Colorado funeral home operator who was accused of selling and stealing body parts pleaded guilty to mail fraud on Tuesday, the US justice department . The lawsuit claims the three sold torsos for $1,000, a pelvis with upper legs for $1,200. 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. Funeral homes owned by a Colorado coroner under investigation following More by The Associated Press, Got a story tip? An agent with the FBI has interviewed at least four former employees who worked for funeral director and body broker Megan Hess, seeking information about how she operates her businesses, the former workers told Reuters. 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. 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. "We don't even have a name for a crime this heinous. Holloman now deals with the guilt of knowing details of what happened to her moms body. FBI probe into Colorado funeral home that doubled as body - Fox News 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 Lake County Sheriffs Office confirmed an active criminal investigation is underway. Details uncovered in the FBI investigation were shared with her. PUBLISHED 8:21 PM CT Apr. Lake County coroner Shannon Kent owns both the Bailey-Kent Funeral Home in Leadville about 100 miles southeast of Denver and the Kent Funeral Home Gypsum about 133 miles west of the Mile High City, The Denver Post reported Friday. Hess made donating a body online easy. DENVER -- To many it is simply the unthinkable. Drop us a note at tips@coloradosun.com. She said that one month she got about $40,000 from selling donated bodies. A woman in Colorado has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for illegally selling body parts. According to High Country News, Hess was running the funeral home in conjunction with a non-profit called Donor Services Inc., through which she sold "donated" body parts to companies a practice referred to as body brokering. 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. None of the former employees or associates Reuters interviewed worked directly for the body broker business. 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. The New York Times, a far-left outlet, admitted in a report that Trump's rollback of a rule from President Barack After reading the states suspension order this week, two women told The Denver Post that the circumstances surrounding E.W. sound eerily familiar. Colorado woman sentenced to 20 years for stealing, selling body parts Unfortunately, the attention wasn't focused on the town's natural beauty or tourism opportunities. The Green Funeral. There are no ethics there when you do that. Megan Hess, 46, pleaded guilty to fraud in July 2022 after a 2018 investigation that exposed her for selling parts of dead bodies that were brought to the funeral home for cremation. "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. Kent also still faces second-degree official misconduct charges stemming from a September 2019 grand jury indictment in the Fifth Judicial District. E.W. Prosecutors said she lied to more than 200 families, who received cremated ashes from bins mixed with the remains of different cadavers. 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. Her revised online biography cited her high school degree and a love of veterinary medicine.. Paul Hawthorne, Getty Images. Colorado regulators can now inspect funeral homes and crematories without owners' permission The state has long had some of the laxest laws in the nation surrounding funeral homes Joe. One of Hesss donors was Rex Dunlap, a frugal Coloradan battling brain cancer. Meme Eberspacher, Dunlaps niece, was at his bedside the night that Dunlap died. Its for the good of the world, and I like to help people, Hess said. Investigation into the allegations are ongoing with the Texas Funeral Services . Subscribe to Funeral Director Daily Prosecutors recommended a sentence for Hess of 12 to 15 years. After receiving the cremains, E.W. Screen for heightened risk individual and entities globally to help uncover hidden risks in business relationships and human networks. Last August, police received a complaint that funds provided to. 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. FBI Raids Montrose Funeral Home Accused Of Donating - CBS News . Andrew Scheid has been the director at . 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. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. On Oct. 13, the state shut down both the Gypsum operation and . Market data provided by Factset. Golden Gate Funeral Home in Dallas is accused of a range of misdeeds, from not embalming or refrigerating bodies in a . Colorado regulators shut down the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in 2018. Amid FBI investigation, state closes case on Montrose funeral home Hiring funeral directors: Do you look for IQ or EQ? Why Donor Services was unable to trace Dunlaps head remains unclear. Access unmatched financial data, news and content in a highly-customised workflow experience on desktop, web and mobile. Hess, along with her mother and father, are all named in a lawsuit, which accuses them of using a backroom to dismember cadavers with a power saw and stack body parts in coolers. John Wayne Gacy House: Now. Legal Statement. This content was originally published here. An indictment filed last week by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Denver alleges 43-year-old Megan Hess, of Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors and Donor Services, harvested body parts from hundreds of dead people without any authorization from their families. The 20-year term was the maximum allowed under law. Heads went for $500 and $250 for a knee prices at significantly discounted rates compared to other body brokers. I just figured it was a legitimate business., When asked by Denver7 if she ever heard bodies being dismembered, Hampson said, you could hear the machine going. Asked if that machine was a saw, she said, Yes, you could hear that in the room (a back room at the funeral home). Source: Bodies stacked up at Jeffersonville funeral home after - WDRB Burg and Teselles law firm is currently suing body brokers in both Colorado and Arizona. . E.W. Investigators discovered 31 dead bodies, some of which were in advanced stages of decomposition. Colorado funeral home owner Megan Hess and her mother who sold body Escher said Koch, who embalmed and dismembered bodies, pulled teeth from some of the corpses to extract the gold in crowns or fillings. He would not discuss the nature of those complaints or any action it may be taking. 2023 FOX News Network, LLC. Megan Hess, 46, operated the Sunset Mesa funeral home in Montrose, Colorado, alongside a body-parts entity called Donor Services, where she undertook the grisly scheme, starting in 2010. Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors of Montrose handled the funeral . On at least three occasions, Staci Kent allegedly responded to calls from law enforcement requesting a coroner at a death scene, according to the indictment. Funeral Director Daily take: I have a hard time fathoming what may have went on at this funeral home. Shannon and Staci Kent did not respond to interview requests from The Denver Post. (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. He covers everything from stolen art and towing to mobile homes and quirky stories that defy category. Copyright 2019 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. The. The conflict of interest of having a side business in body parts just leads to problems. They are distinct from the organ and tissue transplant industry, which the U.S. government closely regulates. Email address: Colorado Funeral Home / Body Broker Continues Under Investigation, Acquisitions, buy-outs, creative ideas. The couple got dressed up in matching outfits and brought a special camera. Staci Kent arrived to one of those death scenes without a body bag, which spurred an argument with authorities, the indictment notes. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. The lawsuit estimates the three were making $40,000 a month from the sale of body parts. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. 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. Twenty-five of the brokers were for-profit corporations. The couple got dressed up in matching outfits and brought a special camera. Kent is already facing charges of perjury and official misconduct for sending wife Staci Kent, who is not authorized to act as a deputy coroner, to death scenes on at least three occasions, according to a September 2019 grand jury indictment. or redistributed. In reality, Burg added, they are just trying to get those bodies free and then they are going to chop them up themselves in parts and make money off the bodies.. Peck was given another six months of probation. But no federal law governs the sale of cadavers or body parts for use in research or education. What You Need To Know. Just about any adult can run for coroner in Colorado. We were greeted at the door by her father, who told us to leave the property. Colorado is nicknamed the "Centennial State" because when it became the 38th state, the United States turned 100 on August 1, 1876. When Reuters reported earlier this year about the unusual twin businesses of owner Megan Hess, federal agents raided the facility and state regulators ordered the funeral home to be shut down. The Colorado Sun is a journalist-owned, award-winning news outlet based in Denver that strives to cover all of Colorado so that our state our community can better understand itself. 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. The industry leader for online information for tax, accounting and finance professionals. The suspension order details a 2019 instance in which an unnamed individual arranged with Kents funeral home for the cremation of their stillborn child. The states Department of Regulatory Agencies said it has nine open complaints about Sunset Mesa higher than average for funeral homes in the state, said spokesman Lee Rasizer. 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. Donating bodies, selling the parts: Frequently asked questions. She took orders for body parts via Hotmail, email records show. State suspends operations of Leadville, Gypsum funeral homes The next year,. The Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors and Donor Services building in Montrose, Colorado, U.S., December 16, 2017. seattletimes.com: Colorado funeral home owner sentenced in body sales 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. Neither addressed the issue about the teeth. I said I dont want to hear anymore.. I'll never be OK.". Koch said she had sold a different batch a year prior, and they took the whole family to Disneyland in California on the gold that they cashed in, Escher said. However, there was more going on beneath the surface. 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.. 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 . did not receive a contract for funeral services, and only received the cremains after several calls to Kent, the order states. florida medical examiner case search - aboutray16-eiga.com Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information. 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. Hoping to get answers, Denver7 visited Hess home in Montrose. 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. Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox. and Cavanagh, Reh had an immensely difficult time reaching the Kents, the phone ringing unanswered for weeks. But two said Hess sometimes bragged about how lucrative it was to sell bodies and body parts. Other charges against Hess will be dropped under a plea agreement, the Sentinel said. Ive been violated, said Alena Holloman. 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. As she mourned the loss of her son, Cavanagh was referred to the Kent Funeral Home in Gypsum to do the cremation. Licenses revoked for Pocatello funeral home - KTVB 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. On at least three occasions, Staci Kent allegedly responded to calls from law enforcement requesting a coroner at a death scene, according to the indictment. 06, 2021. I didnt believe in depression until I lost my baby, Cavanagh said. The gruesome details of the case which authorities say included more than 500 victims drew international attention and shined a light on the . 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. Funeral homes owned by a Colorado coroner under investigation following At her funeral home, Hess charged families up to $1,000 for cremations that never occurred, prosecutors said, and she offered others free cremations in exchange for a body donation. Instead, the media was interested in the dark history behind the town's funeral home, Sunset Mesa. Weeks passed before Hess told him that Donor Services couldnt retrieve the glass eye because the company couldnt locate the researcher who received Dunlaps head, Mabry said. POCATELLO, Idaho A Pocatello funeral home under investigation by the Idaho Board of Morticians has had its licenses revoked. Colorado coroner arrested, accused of tampering with a human body 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. Colorado regulators can now inspect funeral homes and crematories I see his body parts floating in space and I keep trying to grab them and put him back and I can't! Both have become experts on the secret industry of selling body parts on a world wide market. They both plan to file complaints with the Department of Regulatory Affairs. 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. 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. 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. Megan Hess, 46, pleaded guilty to fraud in July. I didnt believe in depression until I lost my baby, Cavanagh said. And as of. Teselle said, Whats shocking to me is that theres not an outcry for there to be more legislation, theres not an outcry for the government to regulate and license these people.. Bodies Found in Unlicensed Funeral Home: Police ", Funeral home remains under federal investigation. Separate from the FBI inquiry, Reuters has learned that Colorado state funeral regulators are investigating Hess's funeral home, Sunset Mesa. Torsos are a popular specimen these days, she wrote. Instead of paying the standard $695 cremation fee to . It was kind of creepy.. ", Tina Shanon, whose mother was dismembered against her will, told the court, "I've worn many masks to cover the pain. Its a community struggling to understand the stories and the accusations about what happened in the back room at Sunset Mesa. Hancocks story started after her husband, Thomas, passed away. After an extensive investigation into this and dozens of similar cases, federal prosecutors on Tuesday charged the owners of the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose, Colorado, on suspicion of illegally brokering the body parts of deceased individuals they were hired to cremate. The transfers were done through Sunset Mesa Funeral Foundation and Donor Services, authorities said. Authorities are now investigating. by Mr. Leadville | Oct 26, 2020 | Leadville News. 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.