Funeral Home Owner Pleads Guilty to Illegally Selling Body Parts

Colorado funeral home owner pleads guilty to selling body parts illegally and giving customers fake ashes.

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New details have surfaced surrounding the owner of a Colorado funeral home who was indicted for doing the unthinkable.

Montrose Funeral home owner Megan Hess was indicted by a grand jury in March of 2022 and accused of doing things only imaginable in a horror movie. Hess was accused of using the funeral home to sell body parts for profit unbeknownst to the customers she was entrusted to serve. Hess and her mother, Shirley Koch, were also accused of forging signatures on consent forms and misleading families as to how their remains would be cared for.

Megan Hess Pleads Guilty To Illegally Selling Body Parts & Providing Fake Ashes

According to The Daily Sentinel, Hess plead guilty to mail fraud, which is surprising, but as a part of her plea deal, all other charges will be dropped. Dropped charges included five more counts of mail fraud and three counts of transporting hazardous material.

Court Documents reveal Hess and Koch were accused of setting up the funeral home as a nonprofit and selling hundreds of bodies for research for eight years between 2010 and 2018. They allegedly did so, even if the family’s directions were for cremation. To make matters worse, they allegedly sold body parts that belonged to people with infectious diseases such as HIV and hepatitis without telling buyers.

If you’re curious how they kept body parts in rotation, the funeral home reportedly kept the lowest rates, which ensured an always-incoming supply of bodies reports The Sentinel.