A Colorado funeral home director accused of stealing and selling the body parts of hundreds of people has pleaded guilty to mail fraud.
The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado saidin a releaseTuesday, that Meghan Hess, 45, of Montrose, Colorado had pleaded guilty to running a complex fraud “devised and executed… to steal the bodies or body parts of hundreds of victims,” from 2010 to 2018.
Hess then “sold those remains to victims purchasing the remains for scientific, medical, or educational purposes,” the release added.
According toTheNew York Times, Hess now faces up to 20 years in jail for her body part scheme, which was run out of the Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors in Montrose. A further eight criminal charges against her were dropped as a part of a plea deal, the newspaper added Tuesday.
Megan Hess.Mike Wood/REUTERS/Alamy
When asked to describe the crime in a United States District Court in Grand Junction, Tuesday, Hess said, “I exceeded the scope of the consent and I’m trying to make an effort to make it right,” reportedThe Daily Sentinel.
The empty Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors & Donor Services in Montrose, Colorado.Joe Amon/The Denver Post via Getty
While the women sometimes received consent from families “to donate small tissue samples or tumors of their dead relatives,” theNew York Timesreported that the pair supplied body parts for research even when families were never asked for their approval or rejected the request in advance.
The elaborate scheme also included forged paperwork and “misleading buyers about the results of medical tests” performed on the bodies, added theTimes, citing court documents.
According to a report from the DOJ at the time of the arrests, Hess and Koch’s mail scheme included shipping “bodies and body parts that tested positive for, or belonging to people who had died from, infectious diseases, including Hepatitis B and C, and HIV, after certifying to buyers that the remains were disease-free.”
The statement added that “These shipments would be through the mail or on commercial air flights in violation of Department of Transportation regulations regarding the transportation of hazardous materials.”
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In a cruel twist, the mother-and-daughter team also repeatedly lied to grieving families about the status of their loved one’s bodies or flat out ignored their wishes, said the DOJ.
“Hess, and at times Koch, would meet with families seeking cremation services, and would offer to cremate the decedents' bodies and provide the remains back to the families,” the DOJ added, stating that the funeral home “would charge $1,000 or more for cremations, but many never occurred.”
“Hess and Koch also delivered remains to families with the representation that the remains were that of the deceased when, frequently, that was not the case,” it added.
According toNBC, Hess is scheduled to be sentenced in January. A change of plea hearing for Koch, who initially pleaded not guilty, is scheduled for July 12 added the outlet.
source: people.com
