Staci Kent arrived to one of those death scenes without a body bag, which spurred an argument with authorities, the indictment notes. Earlier this month, authorities from both Lake and Eagle counties encountered a strong odor of decomposition when they searched the Leadville funeral home, reads. You know, they can't put his head back on his body, they can't put his arms and legs back on his body. The Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors and Donor Services building in Montrose, Colorado, U.S., December 16, 2017. There is also evidence of Donor Services shipping at least 26 boxes containing body parts to various parts of the world in 2016 according to evidence that has been recovered. Why Donor Services was unable to trace Dunlaps head remains unclear. The probe into the coroners funeral homes started back in February, after a client complained to the Lake County Sheriffs Office about the handling of human remains. This content was originally published here. LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A Jeffersonville funeral home is under investigation after the owner allegedly got behind on processing bodies, which began stacking up for an unknown period of. Access unmatched financial data, news and content in a highly-customised workflow experience on desktop, web and mobile. Kent operates six funeral homes in the states high country, which also include Buena Vista, Fairplay, Idaho Springs, and Silverthorne. Each edition is filled with exclusive news, analysis and other behind-the-scenes information you wont find anywhere else. All rights reserved. Nursing Home Under Investigation After Woman Declared Dead Found Breathing at Funeral Home The incident happened at the Water's Edge Rehab and Nursing Center in Port Jefferson, the. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper. Separate from the FBI inquiry, Reuters has learned that Colorado state funeral regulators are investigating Hess's funeral home, Sunset Mesa. Former workers told Reuters that Hess and Koch conducted unauthorized dismemberments of bodies, and a few weeks after a 2018 story was published, the FBI raided the business. It was kinda creepy., It is totally unregulated, said Burg. Finally Reh and her boyfriend went to the funeral home with the expectation that they would see their baby. In Colorado, there are few regulations to catch shoddy behavior, such as illegitimate body trading, by mortuaries. Chantal Reh. Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way. Sunset Mesas operators, Megan Hess and Shirley Koch, were indicted by a federal grand jury in March for allegedly shipping body parts all over the world against the will of family members, who found out years later that the ashes in their homes were not those of their loved ones. Few state laws provide any oversight. It is a business and it is a profit business, added Burg. But no federal law governs the sale of cadavers or body parts for use in research or education. Details of Shannon Kents operations come on the heels of a Montrose funeral home that made international headlines in 2018 after an FBI raid and subsequent two-year investigation. But the business arrangement is highly unusual. By: Tony Kovaleski Posted at 6:00 PM, Oct 31, 2019 The reality of body brokers profiting from the sale of body parts has made national and international headlines following government raids in Arizona and Colorado in recent years. There is also evidence of Donor Services shipping at least 26 boxes containing body parts to various parts of the world in 2016 according to evidence that has been recovered. A change of plea hearing for Koch is scheduled for July 12. GRAND JUNCTION A Colorado funeral home operator accused of illegally selling body parts and giving clients fake ashes has pleaded guilty to mail fraud in federal court. However, on Thursday, Colorado police arrested Shannon and Staci Kent after finding a decaying corpse in a funeral home they previously operated. (Google). Colorado does not regulate body brokers. The conflict of interest of having a side business in body parts just leads to problems,Steve Palmer, a funeral director in Cottonwood, Ariz., and former member of the policy board at the National Funeral Directors Association, said. What You Need To Know. The recent parade of early deaths has hit close to home. Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox. There is even more money to be made in dissecting those bodies and selling the parts. However, there was more going on beneath the surface. The owners of that funeral home are facing charges of desecrating human remains more than four months after investigators found the body, which had been stored in a non-refrigerated room for years. Why their loved ones were stolen from them, and they were given back dry cement or sand and told it was loved ones ashes, said Teselle. The FBI hired a lab to test the cremains given to the families, and they have determined the boxes of ash contain cement, sand and other non-human particles. On March 17, the unsealed indictment revealed that this donor services business would harvest the human remains and then sell them, illegally and without the families' knowledge. did not receive a contract for funeral services, and only received the cremains after several calls to Kent, the order states. There are people and businesses who spend millions and millions of dollars," Teselle added, "trafficking in these body parts as if they were nothing more than cans of soup or loaves of bread., I was pretty shocked, said Jacque Hampson, a former employee of the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose. [wpforms id=436 title=true description=true]. Hess committed crimes, prosecutors said, when she defrauded relatives of the deceased by lying about cremations and by dissecting bodies and selling them without permission. After Mabry threatened to sue Hess for losing the eye, he said Hess wrote him a check: $500, a refund of the money Dunlap had paid to donate plus $5. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Further, the van was holding two other bodies that needed to be removed.. Reuters identified 34 body brokers that have been active across the United States during the past five years. Colorado regulators can now inspect funeral homes and crematories without owners' permission The state has long had some of the laxest laws in the nation surrounding funeral homes Joe. Colorado Ordway Funeral Homes Eaton Family Funeral Home Eaton Family Funeral Home in Ordway 202 E 3rd St Ordway, CO 81063 (719) 267-4221 Click to show location on map Zoom About Eaton Family Funeral Home We understand that losing a loved one can be a very stressful time. Further, the van was holding two other bodies that needed to be removed.. After losing his ability to conduct cremation or funeral home services in December, Kent's Silverthorne funeral parlor sat empty until this month when the new tenant, Colorado Funeral Homes . Kent also operates funeral homes in Silverthorne, Idaho Springs, Fairplay and Buena Vista. She said that one month she got about $40,000 from selling donated bodies. Unfortunately, the attention wasn't focused on the town's natural beauty or tourism opportunities. Megan Hess, the former operator of a Montrose funeral home convicted of selling body parts without family consent, was . The next year,. It described a body broker as a company that acquires dead bodies, dissects them and sells the parts for profit to medical researchers, training organizations and other buyers.. Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors of Montrose handled the funeral . The. Donating bodies, selling the parts: Frequently asked questions. The New York Times, a far-left outlet, admitted in a report that Trump's rollback of a rule from President Barack Colorado regulators shut Sunset Mesa down in February 2018, KMGH-TV reported. Shannon and Staci Kent, 45, of Leadville were charged on Friday with attempted tampering with a deceased human body. A grand jury indictment said that from 2010 through 2018, Hess and Koch offered to cremate bodies and provide the remains to families at a cost of $1,000 or more, but many of the cremations never occurred. The startling discovery led to a further investigation of oversight in the funeral industry. Downard Funeral Home Under Investigation, ISU Involved There are many events that have unfolded over the past couple weeks involving Downard Funeral Home, some including Idaho State University (ISU). SENTINEL FILE PHOTO Sisters Layna and Janet Hutt hold photos of their father, Raymond Hutt, who died in 2016 at the age of 96. MONTROSE, Colorado The Federal Bureau of Investigation is interviewing former employees of a funeral home whose owner runs a side business on the same premises selling human body parts. A funeral home in Crapaud, Prince Edward Island is under RCMP investigation for allegations of financial irregularities. "We don't even have a name for a crime this heinous. Hess had created a nonprofit organization in 2009 called Sunset Mesa Funeral Foundation as a body-broker service doing business as Donor Services, authorities said. (If they've been left standing. It is unbelievable, said Dave Teselle, a Denver-based attorney who represents Hancock and more than five dozen other families in a claim against the owners of Sunset Mesa and the companies who are accused of buying the body parts. By submitting your email to receive this newsletter, you agree to our. Seeing how this chapter is opening up again is incredible, its unbelievable. In February 2018, Lina Cavanagh lost her baby at an advanced stage of pregnancy a loss that took its toll on her, both physically and emotionally. In one instance, on March 10, 2019, Staci Kent was significantly delayed to the scene because the van she was using to pick up the body had a dead battery, bald tires and was buried in snow, prosecutors alleged. When Reuters reported earlier this year about the unusual twin businesses of owner Megan Hess, federal agents raided the facility and state regulators ordered the funeral home to be shut down. It is illegal in the United States to sell organs such as hearts, kidneys and tendons for transplant; they must be donated. A woman in Colorado has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for illegally selling body parts. Koch told the judge she was sorry and took responsibility for her actions. "No, I did not," Hancock responded. And much like E.W. The states Department of Regulatory Agencies said it has nine open complaints about Sunset Mesa higher than average for funeral homes in the state, said spokesman Lee Rasizer. Funeral homes in Leadville and Gypsum are under criminal investigation after authorities this month found an unrefrigerated body, bags of unlabeled cremains, an abandoned stillborn infant and at least one instance in which a family received cremains for their stillborn child mixed with bits of adult body parts and metal fragments. Its a community struggling to understand the stories and the accusations about what happened in the back room at Sunset Mesa. GRAND JUNCTION, COLORADO: On allegations of fraud and illegally selling body parts, a former owner of a funeral home in Colorado was given a 20-year term in federal prison. She operated a funeral home, Sunset Mesa, and a body parts entity, Donor Services, from the same building in Montrose, Colorado. Now the women wonder how many others might have had the same experience. found out the cremains contained ashes from an infant, but also long bone fragments of an older/larger adult individual and metal, according to the suspension order. The owner of the funeral homes, Shannon Kent, is also Lake Countys coroner. Think about it, the FBI came in and raided them, and they raided them because they knew this body broker this was getting bigger and bigger and bigger, said Berg. The other nine were structured as nonprofits, including Donor Services the only broker Reuters could find that still doubles as a funeral home. None of the former employees or associates Reuters interviewed worked directly for the body broker business. Part 8: Former workers describe troubling practices at this mortuary-body broker, including allegations of deceptive marketing and an account of how gold dental work was removed from corpses and sold. Did you ever consent to have this family mutilate your husbands body? asked Denver7. A body bag was found to be leaking bodily fluids along with a container of animal remains which was also leaking fluids. The eye was never returned, said Eberspacher and Dunlaps friend, Ron Mabry. Suppliers of transplant tissue must obtain federal recognition and operate as charities. U.S. District Judge Christine M. Arguello on Tuesday sentenced Hess, 46, to 20 years in prison the maximum allowable for her role in a nearly decade-long scheme to sell body parts without the. The NBC10 Investigators found bodies inside an unlicensed funeral home in Chester, Pennsylvania. A Colorado funeral home operator who was accused of selling and stealing body parts pleaded guilty to mail fraud on Tuesday, the US justice department . felt they were too heavy to be those of a stillborn child, and submitted them for analysis. Updated: 8:07 PM MDT September 14, 2021. With heavy hearts, we announce the death of Arnold Roger Tesnow (Colorado Springs, Colorado), born in Worth, Illinois, who passed away on February 25, 2023 at the age of 78. And it is not against the law to operate a so-called body broker firm from the same facility that houses a funeral home and crematory. Hancock is one of many family members who has learned the cremains she was given by the owners of Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose contained items and materials that were not her husband. Funeral Director Daily take: I have a hard time fathoming what may have went on at this funeral home. Reached by phone at Sunset Mesa, Koch said she did not wish to talk with a Reuters reporter. Ducks, Used body bags, medical gloves and other surgical equipment with dried bodily fluid on them piled on the floor, Bodily fluids leaking out of a body bag containing an individual who had not been refrigerated, A container of animal remains leaking fluids, Several bodies in refrigeration wrapped in sheets or blankets without identifying tags or paperwork, An unmarked casket containing a stillborn infant that was abandoned, the suspension order states, Paperwork scattered several feet deep on the floor. She has been told parts of her husbands body were sold on the world-wide market. Responding to the investigations and details reported out of Montrose, Colorado lawmakers could become the first in the country to pass a law making it illegal for funeral home or crematory owners to operate as a body broker. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.