An ex-funeral home owner and her mother have been sentenced in Colorado after selling body parts without any consent.
Megan Hess, 46, and Shirly Koch, 69, dissected some 560 corpses between 2010 and 2018, selling parts to medical training companies that did not know they had been fraudulently acquired.
Entire bodies were sold in some cases, prosecutors said. It is legal in the US to donate organs, but not sell them.
Hess was sentenced to 20 years in jail and Koch to 15.
Hess – who ran the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in the town of Montrose – charged families up to $1,000 (£834) for cremations that never took place and offered them free of charge in exchange for body part donations in some cases, prosecutors said on Tuesday, January 3, 2023.
Without consent and using forged donor forms, she then sold body parts including arms, legs, and heads through Donor Services, her side business on the same premises.
Several relatives who had used Hess for cremations later learned they had received back ashes mixed with the remains of other people.
“These two women preyed on vulnerable victims who turned to them in a time of grief and sadness,” Leonard Carollo, the FBI’s special agent in charge in Denver, said in a statement.
“But instead of offering guidance, these greedy women betrayed the trust of hundreds of victims and mutilated their loved ones.”
The case was triggered by a Reuters investigation, which led to an FBI raid of the home in 2018.
Emotional victim statements dominated Tuesday’s sentencing hearing.
“When Megan stole my mom’s heart, she broke mine,” said Nancy Overhoff, according to the Denver Post. Erin Smith said: “We came today to hear the handcuffs click.”
Describing it as “the most emotionally draining case I have ever experienced on the bench”, Judge Christine Arguello ordered the two women be sent to prison immediately.
Corpses Of Children, Human Body Parts Found In Refuse Bins Weekly – Waste Management
A waste management expert, Mr Bright Ayebakari has revealed the horrific details of things they encounter in the line of business.
Ayebakari, who is the managing director of Brikari Nigeria Limited, the waste management contractor of Bayelsa State Government, revealed that on a weekly basis corpses of little children, severed body parts, and native doctors charms are found in refuse bins.
Ayebakari, who spoke to NDV in Yenagoa, on refuse disposal and challenges in the state, said: “In our job, we are not supposed to pick corpses, but we see corpses, we see body parts, we see arms and ammunition at times, these are supposed to be classified. Most times, we see corpses, there is no week that we do not pick corpses of little children.
“Sometimes, the medical facilities amputate body parts, the recent one we evacuated was someone’s leg, an adult, somewhere near the New Commissioners’ Quarters in the state capital.
“I think it emanated from a medical facility located around the area and each time we see things like that, we call the attention of the Commissioner for Environment or the Permanent Secretary and the Police, and if it is a corpse, those agencies will do the needful and bury the corpse.
“Occasionally, we pick arms and ammunition and in such cases, we call the police. Recently, we picked two locally made guns and cartridges and we called the attention of the Special Adviser on Security to the Governor. That is to tell you that our workers don’t want anything to do with crime,” he said.
Human waste enclosed in bags
Ayebakari added: “Another thing that results to issues is that we do not have toilets here in some houses, especially the indigenous communities, they do not have toilets. They package their human waste in a polythene bag and take it to the refuse receptacles. These are the major issues we are facing. In this part of the world, we do not sort refuse, everything is packed in one place.
“We have medical wastes, organic wastes, metal wastes, plastic wastes and so on and they are not supposed to be bundled up together, but here, it’s complete confusion because everything is bundled together and we are used to it.
Bag of US dollars
“We are not used to attacks, sometimes some public-spirited persons give our boys money. There was a day we even picked US dollars in a bag, but something funny happened. We picked this bag of dollars from the refuse receptacles, loaded it, and threw it away at the dumpsite, the driver is not used to dollars, so he said that they were fake dollars.
“Then those who picked it called the local bureau de change operators and when they came, they discovered that they were real currency, and before you knew it, some of them got N5 million, N3 million, and so on. So apart from bad things, we equally see good things too,” he asserted.
We notice native doctors’ concoction
On spirituality, the managing director told NDV: “So we see the good, the bad, and the ugly. Sometimes we pick native doctors’ concoctions too. If not for God Almighty, we can have some spiritual problems or issues too. That is the kind of environment we operate in.
“Therefore, we have a complete church in our yard. If you are a Muslim, we give you yours and you manage your beliefs. We have four resident pastors, every morning after preaching and prayers, the safety officer still reminds them of what is expected of every staff.
Source: BBC
