Colorado funeral home owner admits selling body parts in exchange for cash

The former owner of a Colorado funeral home pleaded guilty to secretly dissecting corpses and selling body parts without the consent of grieving family members.

Megan Hess operated Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose and a human body parts business called Donor Services out of the same building. She admitted to defrauding at least a dozen families who had paid to have their loved ones cremated in federal court Tuesday.

Instead of cremating the bodies, she removed their heads, spines, arms, and legs and then sold them, according to court records.

Prosecutors are asking that Hess, who had previously pleaded not guilty, be sentenced to 12 and 15 years in prison. She has been out on bail since her arrest in 2020. Her defense attorney has requested a lighter sentence of two years.

In 2009, Hess and her mother, Shirley Koch, launched a nonprofit donor services organization called Sunset Mesa Funeral Foundation, a "body broker service" that operates out of the funeral home. Their business sold body parts to third parties, primarily for surgery, training, and other educational purposes.

The duo charged customers $1,000 or more for cremations that never occurred. To maximize profits, Hess targeted poor and vulnerable families, who struggled as they made arrangements for their relatives' final days, according to court documents. She also offered free cremations in exchange for a body donation.

Many families received ashes mixed with the remains of different corpses, prosecutors said. One customer received a concrete mix in place of his loved one's remains.

Federal investigators found that Hess forged dozens of body donor consent forms. A former employee accused her of making $40,000 by extracting and selling the gold teeth of some of the deceased as part of the macabre scheme, court documents add. 

"Meeting with hospice on the 4th.... opening the donor floodgates," Hess wrote to a prospective body parts buyer in 2014. "They have four or five deaths a day. Get ready!!! ... How about a bid for whole embalmed spines...$950?

While it is illegal to sell organs such as hearts, kidneys, and tendons for transplants in the United States, the sale of cadavers and body parts for use in research or education is not regulated by federal law.