On Tuesday, a former funeral home owner in Colorado was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for cheating relatives of the deceased by dissecting 560 corpses and selling body parts without authorization.
In July, Megan Hess, 46, pled guilty to fraud. From the same building in Montrose, Colorado, she ran a funeral home, Sunset Mesa, and a body parts company, Donor Services. The maximum authorized by law was a 20-year sentence.
Shirley Koch, her 69-year-old mother, also pleaded guilty to fraud and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. According to court records, Koch’s primary involvement was slicing up the remains.
“Hess and Koch used their funeral home at times to essentially steal bodies and body parts using fraudulent and forged donor forms,” prosecutor Tim Neff said in a court filing. “Hess and Koch’s conduct caused immense emotional pain for the families and next of kin.”
A 2016-2018 Reuters investigative series about the selling of body parts in the United States, a totally unregulated industry, prompted the criminal complaint. Former employees informed Reuters that Hess and Koch performed prohibited body dismemberments, and the FBI raided the firm a few weeks after a 2018 story was published.
Prosecutors emphasized the “macabre nature” of Hess’ plot in their complaint, calling it one of the most significant body parts instances in recent U.S. history.
“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.
The judge ruled that Hess and Koch be imprisoned right now.
According to Hess’ lawyer, she has been wrongfully maligned as a “witch,” a “monster,” and a “ghoul,” while she is a “broken human being” whose behavior can be ascribed to a severe brain injury when she was 18 years old. Hess refused to talk to the judge in court on Tuesday.
Koch apologized to the judge and accepted responsibility for her behavior.
The horror of finding what had happened to their loved ones as described by twenty-six victims.
“Our sweet mother, they dismembered her,” Erin Smith claimed, profitably selling her shoulders, knees, and feet. “We don’t even have a name for a heinous crime.”
“I’ve worn many masks to cover the pain. I’ll never be OK,” Tina Shanon, whose mother was dismembered against her will, told the court. I’ll never do that again.
Organs such as hearts, kidneys, and tendons cannot be sold in the United States; they must be given. However, selling body parts such as heads, arms, and spines for use in research or education, as Hess did, is not prohibited by federal law.
Prosecutors charged Hess with crimes after she cheated relatives
Prosecutors charged Hess with crimes after she cheated relatives of the deceased by lying about cremations and dissecting and selling remains without authorization. Also, prosecutors claimed that the surgical-training companies and other firms that purchased the arms, legs, heads, and torsos from Hess had no idea they had been obtained fraudulently.
Hess charged families up to $1,000 for cremations that never happened at her funeral facility, and she offered others free cremations in exchange for a corpse donation said, Prosecutors.
Prosecutors claimed she lied to over 200 families who received cremated ashes from dumpsters containing the remains of various cadavers.