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On Tuesday, July 5, 2022, Megan Hess was sentenced to a maximum of 20 years in prison by the court in Grand Junction, Colorado. Megan Hess, along with her mother Shirley Koch, was the owner of the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose, Colorado. She was arrested on the grounds of selling body parts illegally, and of committing fraud by giving fake ashes to the families of the deceased who were supposed to be cremated.
On July 5, she pleaded guilty to mail fraud in federal court, following which she was sentenced to a maximum of 20 years in prison. Her defense attorney, however, has appealed to reduce her sentence to two years.
According to the Daily Sentinel, other charges against Megan Hess, including five counts of mail fraud and three counts of transporting hazardous material, are expected to be dropped under a plea agreement.
20 years in prison for Megan Hess as mother-daughter duo stands accused of selling human body parts
The operators of the Colorado funeral home Sunset Mesa, Shirley Koch and her daughter Megan Hess, were arrested back in 2020 on charges of mail fraud and transportation of hazardous materials. Two years later, she pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud.
According to the court, the funeral home claimed to cremate the bodies of the deceased and provided the remains to the families at a cost of $1,000 or more for eight years. However, several of these cremations never took place, and the ashes sent were fake.
Suspicion fell on Hess when it came to light that her body parts business, Donor Services, operated from the same building as the funeral home. As stated by the U.S. Justice Department, Hess would transfer some of the bodies or body parts to third parties for research instead of cremating them, without the knowledge or consent of the bereaved families.
The authorities added that Hess and Koch behaved fraudulently with third parties too. Despite their requirements, Hess would ship bodies belonging to people who had tested positive for infectious diseases including Hepatitis B, C, and HIV.
With regards to the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home case, Representative Matt Soper said:
"One thing that I heard over and over from the families is it was like a second death."
He further added that body brokering or facilitating the sale of body parts was not common in the USA.
According to state law, officials are not allowed to enter a funeral home in Colorado unless there are criminal charges. Representatives Matt Soper and Dylan Roberts plan on amending this law in light of this horrific case.
