Mom, Daughter Funeral Home Directors Indicted: Illegally Selling Body Parts of Dead W/Out Families' Consent

[Turd Fergusen]

A federal grand jury indicted the owners of Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors on charges they fraudulently obtained and sold human body parts, including heads, legs and a spine, and that some parts contained infectious diseases when they were shipped around the globe.

Megan Hess and her mother, Shirley Koch, appeared Tuesday afternoon before a U.S. Magistrate in Grand Junction where they were advised of their rights and the charges pending against them, U.S. Attorney Jason Dunn said in a media conference call about the indictment.

Hess, 43, and Koch, 66, allegedly sold the body parts without permission and gave cremains of unidentified people to surviving family members as part of a an alleged macabre scheme they carried out from 2010 to 2018, Dunn said. The mother and daughter fraudulently made hundreds-of-thousands of dollars while victimizing Western Slope families who trusted Sunset Mesa with the bodies of their loved ones, he said.

“The defendants are charged with committing a blatant fraud on many, many victims. This betrays a fundamental trust during one of the worst times in a person’s life – having to make arrangements for a deceased loved one,” Dunn said. “It is hard to imagine the pain and worry of those who used Sunset Mesa and not knowing what happened to their loved ones.

Full Story:
https://www.denverpost.com/2020/03/17/sunset-mesa-funeral-directors-montrose-colorado-indicted/

 

[rushman]

What kind of fuck would want to buy a head?

 

[Hypodermic Noodles]

What kind of fuck would want to buy a head?

There's actually a website where you can buy legit human skulls...and other bones.
[automerge]1584638777[/automerge]

There's actually a website where you can buy legit human skulls...and other bones.

Real Human Products - Standard

Medical and Educational professionals may inquire to their eligibility in viewing additional products by completing the form HERE.

www.skullsunlimited.com

[automerge]1584639379[/automerge]

There's actually a website where you can buy legit human skulls...and other bones.
[automerge]1584638777[/automerge]

Real Human Products - Standard

Medical and Educational professionals may inquire to their eligibility in viewing additional products by completing the form HERE.

www.skullsunlimited.com

Apparently you have to be a Medical or Educational Professional.... but there is a market out there.

 

[MildlyMedicated]

Okay who told this woman that that hair-do was acceptable? The dead, dismembered folks are laughing!

 

[TX Leather Face]

They need to get with Planned Parenthood and hire their legal team. Guaranteed acquittal.

 

[The Night Nurse]

Looks like a female version of H.H. Holmes.

9 Things You Didn't Know About America's First Serial Killer, H.H. Holmes

The blueprints for his "Murder Castle" included 51 doorways that opened to brick walls, 100 windowless rooms, stairs that led to nowhere, two furnaces, and body-sized chutes to an incinerator.

www.mentalfloss.com

 

[Turd Fergusen]

Med schools buy this stuff. It's supposed to be for when you "donate your body to science" but unfortunatley most people are ill informed about what actually happens.

 

[Satanica]

I've donated my body to the medical school, and, frankly, I could care less what happens to it after I'm dead. As long as I've spared my family the final expenses, I've accomplished my goal.

 

[Turd Fergusen]

That commendable @Satanica . I just feel like a lot of people think they'll just be dissected or examined for cause of death, etc. When in reality your eyes may go to a optometry school and your spine to a orthopedic school.

 

[BuffettGirl]

Okay who told this woman that that hair-do was acceptable? The dead, dismembered folks are laughing!

The higher the hair the closer to Gawd y'all! I can hear them "What do you mean stealing body parts and selling them on the black market isn't Christian?"

 

[Babs]

What kind of fuck would want to buy a head?

Dr. Frankenstein

 

[roadsidehorror]

What kind of fuck would want to buy a head?

Because I want to keep it in a jar on the coffee table. If it's a boy head I will call him Juan. If it's a girl head I will call her Susie Q.

 

[Ramona the brave]

So I bet people are now wondering what this world is coming to and who you can even trust anymore.

The answer is simple, people.
Apart from the obvious derelicts and drug addicts...Never trust a person with hair like this.
Or its ugly cousin, the mom cut.
That's pretty much it.

 

[Craygor]

Yo, Ms. Hess, the 80's wants it's hair back.

 

[Keepalowprofile]

Sick.

 

[Fellofftheporch]

I totally want to sit down with these 2 and ask a few questions. First, How does one get into the selling of body parts?

 

[Sevens My Charm]

Because I want to keep it in a jar on the coffee table. If it's a boy head I will call him Juan. If it's a girl head I will call her Susie Q.

Good conversation starter with your centerpiece

 

[JackBurton]

I dont care what happens to my decaying, rotten corpse after i go.

However i also dont want anyone to make money off me in any capacity.

Like they can cut me up and sell my body off illegally all over the world, but theyd have to give the money to charity or some shit.I hate people and wouldnt want anyone tobe fiannciall rewarded cuz of my death.

Israel is big on the illegal/black market organ and body part trade btw. Pretty intersting stuff, read up on it sometime. Jews are in deep in that racket, surprisingly.

 

[Sejanus]

What a sick way to make a buck.
No dignity for the remains.
All this was in their community FFS!

 

[Old Man Metal]

That legit looks just like a clown wig.

 

[Bobbo]

What kind of fuck would want to buy a head?

Now where the fuck am I gonna buy a head?!?

 

[Bobbo]

I totally want to sit down with these 2 and ask a few questions. First, How does one get into the selling of body parts?

eBay.

 

[Turd Fergusen]

First, How does one get into the selling of body parts?

Probably started off as an arms dealer.

 

[Sevens My Charm]

If convicted on all counts, Hess and Koch face up to 135 years in prison.

Broker their asses off piece by piece..

 

[Fellofftheporch]

eBay.

Id be demanding my money back through Paypal when I found out my new leg arrived with a case of syphilis. What the hell am i supposed to do with a syphilis infected leg?

 

[Totemic]

Id be demanding my money back through Paypal when I found out my new leg arrived with a case of syphilis. What the hell am i supposed to do with a syphilis infected leg?

Beat your neighbors with it!

 

[Bobbo]

Id be demanding my money back through Paypal when I found out my new leg arrived with a case of syphilis. What the hell am i supposed to do with a syphilis infected leg?

Buy another and have a pair?

 

[Sugar Cookie]

A Colorado woman connected to a nonprofit funeral home with a stated goal of helping the underprivileged pay for funeral services has entered a guilty plea for selling the human body parts of “hundreds of victims,” the U.S. Attorneys’s Office for the District of Colorado announced on Tuesday.

Megan Hess, 45, of Montrose, Colorado pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud and aiding and abetting, prosecutors said. “According to the plea agreement, beginning in 2010 and continuing into 2018, Hess devised and executed a scheme to steal the bodies or body parts of hundreds of victims, and then sold those remains to victims purchasing the remains for scientific, medical, or educational purposes,” they added.

The plea deal avoids a three-week trial that was scheduled to begin on July 25, according to court records.

A co-defendant named Shirley Koch allegedly assisted with the transactions. A change of plea hearing has been scheduled in her concomitant criminal case for July 12.

Under the guise of cremation services, prosecutors say the duo “harvested body parts from, or otherwise prepared entire bodies of, hundreds of decedents for body broker services” despite “lacking any authorization whatsoever.”

“In many instances, HESS and KOCH neither discussed nor obtained authorization for donation of decedents’ bodies or body parts for body broker services,” the DOJ alleged, again according to the indictment. “In other instances, the topic of donation was raised by HESS or KOCH, and specifically rejected by the families.”

Some families agreed, the document points out, but many of those agreements contemplated “that only small samples, such as tumors or portions of skin, would be taken for testing or research,” the DOJ alleged.

In some instances the recipients of the body parts asked for specimens that were free and clear of infectious diseases, such as HIV. The feds said that the duo falsified blood test results and shipped specimens that were infected while claiming they were not.

Colorado Woman Pleads Guilty to 'Harvesting and Marketing' Human Body Parts

A Colorado woman connected to a nonprofit funeral home has entered a guilty plea for selling the human body parts of "hundreds of victims," prosecutors say.

lawandcrime.com

 

[Donut Whisperer]

I wonder how many places this is happening. Maybe I’m cynical, but I suspect this is not the only funeral home doing this.

 

[Alf]

I wonder how many places this is happening. Maybe I’m cynical, but I suspect this is not the only funeral home doing this.

I read a short story years and years (. . . and years . . .) ago about a veteran whose family was dumbfounded that he had lived his life with a large piece of armament embedded in his body without complaint. They discovered it when he died and the funeral director was gathering his cremains to present to his family, and when he opened the crematorium he found a large piece of steel that had partially melted, leaving the threads plainly visible but obscuring any markings that may have been on the item. And it made the papers, then the story went national.

And late one night one of the morgue attendants got a call from one of his professors asking about it. The professor seemed to be prescient; at any rate he was able to describe exactly what this young man had done: extracting the decedent's femur then replacing it with a length of threaded steel pipe and sending the gentleman on to the next step of his journey. The medical school student -- for that was the post the morgue attendant held during the day -- did not realize that that journey would be routed through the crematorium. Luckily, even though evidence of his actions was discovered, the evidence of those actions was misinterpreted in a manner that focused on the courage of the unassuming veteran who had suffered a devastating injury yet recovered and lived a long and happy life. The student finally confessed what he had done to his professor, who remarked that when he was in medical school he used a chair leg or broomstick to replace a purloined femur when it became necessary.

Fiction? Yes, but how deeply rooted in fact was it?

--Al