An ex-funeral director, Megan Hess, has been convicted after he was found guilty of ripping gold teeth from people’s remains and selling their body parts, including heads.
The 45-year-old Hess would hand over urns filled with fake ashes to hide her shameful scam, even giving one mourner concrete mix in place of their relative’s remains.
Hess, who previously denied all the charges levelled against her, finally admitted the shocking truth in July and was sentenced to 20 years jail terms.
An FBI investigator found Hess forged dozens of body-donor consent forms at her Sunset Mesa funeral home in the town of Montrose, before selling various heads, arms, spines and legs to medical research.
Hess also extracted and sold the gold teeth of some of the deceased.
She was accused of body harvesting from 2010 to 2018 alongside her mother Shirley Koch. The latter was sentenced to 15 years in jail.
“These two women preyed on vulnerable victims who turned to them in a time of grief and sadness,” Leonard Carollo, the FBI’s special agent in charge in Denver, said in a statement.
