A Colorado woman connected to a nonprofit funeral home with a stated goal of helping the underprivileged pay for funeral services has entered a guilty plea for selling the human body parts of “hundreds of victims,” the U.S. Attorneys’s Office for the District of Colorado announced on Tuesday.
Megan Hess, 45, of Montrose, Colorado pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud and aiding and abetting, prosecutors said. “According to the plea agreement, beginning in 2010 and continuing into 2018, Hess devised and executed a scheme to steal the bodies or body parts of hundreds of victims, and then sold those remains to victims purchasing the remains for scientific, medical, or educational purposes,” they added.
The plea deal avoids a three-week trial that was scheduled to begin on July 25, according to court records.
An indictment filed March 12, 2020 says Hess formed a corporation — Sunset Mesa Funeral Foundation, Inc. (“SMFF”) — with the aforementioned goal of being able to “provide assistance to community members who have no resources for funeral/cremation services.” Hess dissolved that entity “on or about May 4, 2009,” the document continues, and “created a Trade Name for SMFF known as Donor Services.”
The feds then alleged what the switch was all about:
Donor Services’ primary source of income was harvesting and marketing for sale purportedly donated human remains, such as heads, torsos, arms, legs, or entire human bodies, to customers who used the remains for scientific, medical, or educational purposes (hereinafter referred to as “body broker services”). At all times relevant to this indictment, HESS operated her body broker services business under the name Donor Services out of the same location as a funeral business operating under the name Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors in Montrose, Colorado.
In September 2011, Hess is alleged to have brought the name “Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors” (“SMFD”) into the corporate fold. “From that date, and continuing until February 6, 2018, HESS owned and operated a funeral home providing burial and cremation services under the SMFD name,” prosecutors alleged.
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