Colorado shuts down funeral home whose owner sold human body parts
FBI raided funeral parlour that gave one grieving family concrete dust instead of human ashes
Colorado officials indefinitely shut down the funeral home and crematory this week of a woman who runs a side business selling donated body parts from the same building.
In its order, issued Monday, the state’s Office of Funeral Home and Crematory Registration suspended operations at Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors after saying that cremated remains returned to one donor were analysed by the family and found to be concrete, not human ashes.
The action against Sunset Mesa and its owner, Megan Hess, comes after an FBI raid last week. That raid followed a report by Reuters in January about alleged practices at Sunset Mesa funeral home and Donor Services, the Hess-run body donation firm.
Former employees of the Montrose, Colorado, establishment had said before the FBI raid that they were troubled by what they witnessed at the funeral home.
Although Hess spoke about her businesses in 2016, she has since declined to comment. By Tuesday morning, the funeral home’s website had been taken offline and the phone number disconnected. Hess’s lawyer, Carol Viner, could not be reached for comment. Previously, Viner had asked reporters to “refrain from contacting” Hess employees “for any reason.”