Mother and daughter morticians in Colorado were arrested after they were accused of charging $1,000 for cremations they often wouldn’t carry out and for selling body parts, some of them diseased, without permission from grieving relatives.
Megan Hess, 43, and her mother, Shirley Koch, 66, were charged with six counts of mail fraud involving 38 decedents and three counts of illegal transportation of hazardous materials, says the US Justice Department in an indictment that was unsealed.
The last charge regarding hazardous materials related to the heads of dead people who had tested positive for hepatitis-C.
Megan Hess (pictured), 43, and her mother, Shirley Koch, 66, were charged with mail fraud and illegal transportation of hazardous materials for allegedly using their Montrose, Colorado, funeral home to supply a non-profit body brokering business, which they also owned
Shirley Koch is pictured in an image posted on Facebook. She and her daughter Hess were charged were charged with six counts of mail fraud involving 38 decedents and three counts of illegal transportation of hazardous materials, says the US Justice Department
Hess and Koch were accused of charging $1,000 for cremations they often wouldn’t carry out and for selling body parts, some of them diseased, without permission from grieving relatives. Their funeral home in Montrose, Colorado, is pictured
The women allegedly provided altered documents assuring buyers from a non-profit body brokerage business, which they also owned, that the heads came from decadents who had tested negative, or did not include documentation, reports the Montrose Daily Press.
Both women appeared in federal court in Denver on Tuesday and pleaded not guilty.
Hess opened the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose in 2006, and the body part brokerage scheme was alleged to have started three years later.
According to the indictment, the mother and daughter used the funeral home to supply the body brokerage business, and had sent out the remains without permission from next-of-kin, even though they claimed they had the authority to buyers.
‘In at least dozens of instances, Hess and Koch did not follow family wishes, and neither discussed nor obtained authorization for ‘donor services’ to transfer decedents’ bodies or body parts to third parties,’ the Justice Department said in a news release about the case which was handled by US Attorney Jason Dunn.
Megan Hess is pictured in an image posted on Facebook. She and her mother Shirley Koch pleaded not guilty to federal charges alleging they sold diseased body parts and charged $1000 for cremations that sometimes never happened at their Colorado funeral home
Hess (back right) is pictured with her mother Shirley Koch (front left) in a family photo with her father Alan Koch (front right). Also pictured is Koch’s brother Alan (back left) and another family member
‘In the few instances where families agreed to donation, Hess and Koch sold the remains of those decedents beyond what was authorized by the family, which was often limited to small tissue samples, tumors, or portions of skin. Hess and Koch also delivered cremains to families with the representation that the cremains were that of the deceased when, frequently, that was not the case.’
Dunn told reporters in a conference call that relatives who felt guilt or responsibility for what happened to their loved ones, ‘I want them to know that this is not their fault, that they were the victims here.’
The US attorney said the mother and daughter morticians even had a container in their office where they had commingled the cremains of various people.
A conviction on the mail fraud brings up to 20 years in federal prison, per count.
The US attorney said the mother and daughter morticians even had a container in their office where they had commingled the cremains of various people. Megan Hess is pictured wearing her funeral home name tag
Convictions on transportation of hazardous materials are punishable by up to five years in federal prison per count.
Mother and daughter also are facing up to a $250,000 fine, per count.
The FBI began probing the funeral home after the mother and daughter morticians were accused of removing gold teeth from dead bodies and selling them before using the money to go to Disneyland.
Keri Escher, an ex-employee of the funeral home, told Reuters that Koch would pull teeth from some of the corpses to extract the gold in crowns or fillings and then sell what she collected.
Escher, who helped manage a former cremation-marketing business run by Hess, said Koch ‘showed me her collection of gold teeth one day.’
‘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,’ she told Reuters.
Following Escher’s claims, the FBI began interviewing former employees.