Colorado Funeral Home Director Megan Hess has been charged with stealing and selling body parts.
Hess was sentenced to 20 years in prison for selling body parts without permission from the families of the people who had died.
A former Colorado funeral home owner Megan Hess was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for defrauding relatives of the dead by dissecting 560 corpses and selling body parts without permission. pic.twitter.com/dhVUwnXVYA
— Real News (@OnRealNews) January 4, 2023
As part of a plea deal, Hess’s mother, Shirley Koch, was given 15 years in prison for helping to plan and carry out the crime. According to reports, Koch’s main responsibility was to chop up bodies.
From 2020 to 2018, Hess charged families for cremations that never occurred. Some families received ashes that were not their loved ones, and one person even received a concrete mix in place of the washed.
The two women would also sell bodies that had infections and tell buyers that the bodies were infection free.
#lashow #news #UnitedStates #update #Colorado #MeganHess #ShirleyKoch #crime #organs #organdonor #organtrafficking pic.twitter.com/pTSzalqd9y
— LA Show (@Lashow_) January 5, 2023
In the United States, selling organs, tissues, or body parts is illegal.
Hess would often ask low-income families of the deceased to cremate the bodies of their loved ones.
U.S. Attorney Cole Finegan said, “The defendant’s conduct was horrific, morbid, and driven by greed.”
“They took advantage of numerous victims who were at their lowest point given the recent loss of a loved one.”
FBI Denver Acting Special Agent in Charge Leonard Carollo said that Hess and Koch made money at the cost of denying the requests of grieving families.
Carollo said, “Nothing can guarantee solace for the victims or repair the damage done, but perhaps this sentence can mark the end of a horrible chapter in their lives.”
More on this story via Breitbart.
Nine-year-old Lyric Jones and her mother Teran Christian stands outside Wayne Aspinall Courthouse as an officers of the court asked the two to move to the public sidewalk with their signs on January 3, 2023 in Grand Junction, Colorado.
The two came to the courthouse for the sentencing of Megan Hess and Shirley Koch. Christians grandfather Michael Holland was a victim along with hundreds of other families who used Sunset Mesa Funeral home. (RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images)
