Former Colorado funeral home owner gets 20 year sentence for selling body parts

A 46-year-old woman who is the former owner of a funeral home in Colorado was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Tuesday for dissecting 560 corpses and selling body parts without permission. The accused, identified as Megan Hess defrauded the relatives of the deseased and stole body parts using fake donor forms, officials told Reuters.

Megan Hess pleaded guilty to fraud in July. She managed a funeral home, Sunset Mesa, and a body parts entity, Donor Services, from the same location in Montrose, Colorado.

Megan’s mother, identified as Shirley Koch, aged 69, also pleaded guilty to fraud and was sentenced to 15 years in jail. Koch’s role was chopping up the bodies, court records show.

The case became known after a 2016-2018 Reuters investigative series on the sale of body parts in US. Reuters was informed about the mother-daughter duo's operation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided the location a few weeks after the story went on air.

The prosecutors in the case outline the matter as one of the most significant body parts cases in recent US history.

The judge ordered that the mother-daughter duo be sent to prison stright away.

In the meantime, Megan Hess' lawyer gave grounds for her actions and said they could be attributed to a traumatic brain injury at age 18.

Erin Smith, one of the victims who gave her testimony in court, said the duo dismembered her mother and sold her shoulders, knees and feet for money.

Selling organs like hearts, kidneys and tendons for transplant is illegal in the United States and must be donated. However, Hess' dealt in the sale of heads, arms and spines - something which is not regulated by federal law.

As maintained by the prosecutors, the surgical-training firms which bought the arms, legs, heads and torsos from Hess didn’t know they had been fraudulently obtained. They added that Hess charged families up to 1,000 USD for cremations that never took place.

Over 200 families fell victim to Hess' operation and received ashes from bins mixed with the remains of different dead bodies.

Also Read: Ukraine Shocking Video: Journalist narrowly escapes from Russian missile