04 January 2023 , 11:46
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A former funeral home owner has been sentenced along with her mum after the pair dissected corpses and sold body parts without any consent.
Megan Hess, 46, and her mother Shirly Koch, 69, dissected 560 corpses between 2010 and 2018 in Colorado, US.
Hess, who ran the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in the town of Montrose, charged families up to $1,000 (£834) for cremations that she did not carry out, prosecutors said.
They also said that while a number of the bodies dissected and sold were believed to have been cremated, in other cases Hess offered part cremations free of change in exchange for body part donations.
With the assistance of her mother, Hess then sold parts to medical training companies which did not know the body parts had been fraudulently acquired.
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Shirley Koch, right, arriving with her attorneys for her and her daughters Megan Hess' sentencing trial on Tuesday (Denver Post via Getty Images)Prosecutors said that in some cases, entire bodies were sold off.
Hess also extracted and sold the gold teeth of some of the deceased.
An FBI investigation found Hess forged dozens of body-donor consent forms before selling various heads, arms, spines and legs to medical research.
It is legal in the US to donate organs, but not to sell them.
Hess was sentenced to 20 years in jail for her crimes, while Koch was sentenced to 15 years behind bars.
She then sold body parts, including arms, legs and heads, through Donor Services - a side business she ran on the same premises.
Shirley Koch on her way to the Wayne Aspinall Courthouse (Denver Post via Getty Images)A number of relatives who had used Hess for cremations later learned they had received back ashes mixed with the remains of other people.
Leonard Carollo, the FBI's special agent in charge in Denver, said in a statement that the two women preyed on vulnerable victims who turned to them in a “time of grief and sadness”.
"But instead of offering guidance, these greedy women betrayed the trust of hundreds of victims and mutilated their loved ones,” he continued.
The court case was prompted by an investigation by Reuters, which resulted in an FBI raid of the home in 2018.
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The case was described as 'emotionally draining' by the judge (Denver Post via Getty Images)The mother and daughter’s sentencing hearing took place on Tuesday.
According to the Denver Post, a victim statement read by Nancy Overhoff said: "When Megan stole my mom's heart, she broke mine.”
Another victim, Erin Smith, said: "We came today to hear the handcuffs click."
Judge Christine Arguello described the case as the “most emotionally draining case I have ever experienced on the bench” as she ordered the two women be sent to prison immediately.