A former funeral home owner has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for dissecting hundreds of bodies and selling the parts.
Megan Hess, 46, pleaded guilty in July to defrauding relatives of the dead by dissecting 560 corpses and selling body parts without permission. Hess had operated a funeral home, Sunset Mesa, and a body parts entity, Donor Services, from the same building in Montrose, Colorado.
She was given a 20-year federal prison term yesterday, the maximum allowed under the law. Hess’s mother, Shirley Koch, 69, who dismembered the bodies, also admitted fraud and was sentenced to 15 years.
The surgical-training companies and other firms which bought the arms, legs, heads and torsos from Hess were unaware they had been fraudulently obtained, prosecutors said.
“This is the most emotionally draining case I have ever experienced on the bench,” Christine Arguello, a US district judge, said during the sentencing in Colorado. “It’s concerning to the court that defendant Hess refuses to assume any responsibility for her conduct.”
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Prosecutors stressed the “macabre nature” of Hess’s scheme and described it as one of the most significant body parts cases in recent US history. “Hess and Koch used their funeral home at times to essentially steal bodies and body parts using fraudulent and forged donor forms,” Tim Neff, for the prosecution, said in a court filing.
Hess declined to speak to the judge in court. Her lawyer said her conduct could be attributed to a traumatic brain injury at age 18. They added that she had been vilified as a witch, a monster and a ghoul, when instead she is a “broken human being”. Koch told the judge that she took responsibility for her actions and was sorry.
Twenty-six victims described their horror at discovering what had happened to their loved ones. “Our sweet mother, they dismembered her,” one said. “We don’t even have a name for a crime this heinous.”
Tina Shanon, whose mother was dismembered against her will, told the court: “I’ve worn many masks to cover the pain. I’ll never be OK.”
Hess charged families up to $1,000 for cremations that never occurred, prosecutors said, and offered others free cremations in exchange for a body donation. Prosecutors said 200 families had received cremated ashes from bins mixed with the remains of different cadavers.
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The federal investigation was triggered by a Reuters investigation of body part sales in the US. Former workers told the news agency that Hess and Koch had conducted unauthorised dismemberments of bodies. The FBI raided the business shortly after the story was published in 2018.
It is illegal in the US to sell organs such as hearts, kidneys and tendons for transplant; they must be donated. However, selling body parts such as heads, arms and spines for use in research or education is not regulated by federal law.