Emily Chan
In the quiet town of Montrose, Colorado, something sinister was lurking beneath the surface. Last year, a horrible stench wafted from the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home, leading to a gruesome discovery.
It turned out that the operators of the funeral home were selling the body parts of people’s loved ones without their knowledge or consent.
The perpetrators, 46-year-old Megan Hess, the owner of the business, and her mother and co-conspirator, 69-year-old Shirley Koch, were sentenced to federal prison on January 3, 2023, for their illegal scheme.
Hess received a sentence of 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to one count of mail fraud and aiding and abetting. Koch was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the same crimes.
It all started in 2010 when Hess and Koch created Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors. From 2010 to 2018, they would frequently meet with families seeking cremation services for their deceased loved ones.
During those meetings, they told the families that the bodies would be cremated and then the cremated remains would be returned. However, they would harvest the bodies instead and prepare them to sell for research.
Families who had requested cremation would often be given remains that didn’t belong to their loved ones, or they were given completely fake remains. In many cases, Hess and Koch did not discuss the topic of donation for research with the families.
During the times they did, most of the families rejected the idea. In the small number of cases where families agreed to donate the body to science, Hess and Koch would sell more of the body than the families had authorized.
They also shipped bodies and body parts that tested positive for infectious diseases, including Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, and HIV, even after asserting to buyers that the remains were free of disease. Hess also used cheap rates to draw patrons in, ensuring that they would always have a supply of body parts to sell.
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