The funeral director was illegally selling parties

A funeral home manager in Denver, Colorado, was sentenced Tuesday to 20 years in prison for illegally selling limbs and whole cadavers without the consent of the families of the deceased.

Megan Hess, a 46-year-old woman, pleaded guilty last July to mail fraud and aiding and abetting charges.

The plea agreement states that between 2010 and 2018, a woman and others stole the bodies and parts of hundreds of victims and then sold them to individuals who purchased human remains from mortuary dealers, according to a statement from the Colorado District Attorney.

The director’s mother, Shirley Koch, 69, was sentenced to 15 years in prison on the same charges.

The two women were also sending back positive cadavers and limbs, or traces of people who died of infectious diseases, including hepatitis B and C and HIV.

They assured the buyers that the human remains were intact and that they did not contract any disease, according to the press release from the public prosecutor.

The judge who sentenced the two women to prison said, “The behavior of the defendants was egregious, intimidating and motivated by greed. They took advantage of many victims who were at their lowest level due to the loss of a loved one.”

“Without informing the families and without their consent, the women failed to respect the wishes of the bereaved families and mutilated the bodies of their family members in order to sell them for a profit,” FBI agent Leonard Carollo said in the attorney general’s statement.