Megan Hess: Funeral home director and her mother sentenced in body brokering case
Funeral home directors Megan Hess and her mother, Shirley Koch, were both sentenced on Jan. 3, 2023 after the pair pleaded guilty to mail fraud back in November, according to a CBS report.
Hess, 45, received the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, while Koch, 68, received a 15-year sentence from U.S. District Judge Christine Arguello after the court heard emotional testimony from victims about the pain they’d suffered under the notorious body-brokering scheme, CBS says.
The mother and daughter ran the now-closed Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose, CO between 2010 and 2018 and also founded the Sunset Mesa Funeral Foundation in 2009, wishing to provide “assistance to community members who have no resources for funeral/cremation services”, offering such services for as low as $1000, according to a 2020 indictment.
Instead, the indictment accused the women of selling bodies and body parts to third parties without the consent or knowledge of families, and then giving families back remains that weren’t those of their deceased loved one. Some families reported that they received concrete bits, fabric, remains of other people, tooth caps, and other debris, according to previous reports by the Daily Sentinel and Courthouse News.
