Former funeral director gets 20 years for selling corpse parts from 560 people

A former funeral director from Colorado was sentenced to two decades in prison for secretly selling the body parts of over 560 corpses, according to The Daily Beast.

"Megan Hess, 46, pleaded guilty to mail fraud in November under a deal with prosecutors, who dropped the other charges against her," reported A.J. MacDougall. "Her 69-year-old mother, Shirly Koch, was sentenced to 15 years after admitting to mail fraud and aiding and abetting."

"The pair were accused of dissecting the bodies between 2010 and 2018, telling their victims’ families that their loved ones would be cremated," said the report. "Instead, they shipped the parts to medical training companies, which were unaware the bodies had been fraudulently acquired. In some cases, the parts were hazardous, infected with HIV, as well as hepatitis B and C, even as Hess and Koch reassured their buyers the material was disease-free."

Colorado U.S. Attorney Cole Finegan condemned their side hustle as "horrific and morbid and driven by greed."

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This is not the first time that people working with bodies have landed in hot water for abusing the trust of families and the public in shocking ways.

Last year, a woman was shocked after learning a doctor used her late World War II veteran husband's corpse in a $500-per-view autopsy show for paying customers at a hotel in Oregon. And in one of the most prominent cases in recent years, unlicensed medical examiner Shawn Parcells got five years for fraud after conducting illegal and uncredentialed autopsies, falsely leading clients to believe he was a doctor.