Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
This episode of Swindled may contain graphic descriptions or audio recordings of disturbing events which may not be suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised. It may not be the kind of story that will bring holiday cheer. But tonight, hundreds of families probably had no idea their loved ones and their bodies were cut up, sold, and yes, even rented out of this shabby warehouse in Detroit.
In February 2012, cargo handlers at Detroit Metro Airport made a gruesome discovery. Garbage bags containing eight freshly severed human heads were found inside blood-filled ice coolers leaking onto the floor of a Delta plane.
According to the paperwork, the cargo was legitimate. The heads were returning from some kind of medical symposium in Israel back to their owner, a man named Arthur Rathburn, a body broker in Detroit who rented and sold human corpses and body parts to whoever needed one, usually medical schools, law enforcement agencies, and universities. It's an entirely legal and vital industry, although highly unregulated, which always attracts those with a highly questionable moral code.
In some states, the only barriers to entry to selling human bodies include a sharp blade and an iron stomach. No GED or certification required. Arthur Rathburn had an associate's degree. With that, he became the well-respected and published coordinator of the University of Michigan's anatomical donation program in the late 80s before he was caught commingling ashes and selling parts out the back door.
Rathburn always wanted to be a private dealer anyway, so in 1989 he launched International Biological, which he operated out of a skeezy warehouse. The company was highly profitable. A human body could fetch up to $100,000 on the black market if parted out. But the job wasn't easy. Shipments of body parts to or from Rathburn's company seemed to be constantly intercepted.
and he had been reprimanded at least twice for failing to provide documentation proving that the bodies he sold were willingly donated. It was a lot to keep up with. Federal and state authorities had been tracking Rathburn's cargo for years, but usually after a few questions from the Centers for Disease Control or whoever, Arthur Rathburn would collect his bloody heads and limbs from the airport and be on his way, even if he gave them every reason to ask a few more.
For example, during the latest interception, Rathburn told authorities that the mess was nothing to worry about. The heads and the coolers were embalmed. They weren't. And he said they were tested and disease-free. Another lie. It was later discovered that one of the donors had died of bacterial sepsis and pneumonia before their head was removed with a chainsaw and passed around the world.
Arthur Rathburn was aware of that fact. He was also aware that the red liquid leaking from the ice coolers was in fact blood. But he soothed authorities' concerns by telling them it was a disinfectant mouthwash. Rathburn said it was only Listerine. Apparently, the CDC and everyone else took his word for it and skipped the taste test because Arthur Rathburn was cleared. He retrieved his heads and was back in business the next day.
Almost two years later, in December 2013, cargo handlers at Chicago O'Hare International Airport made a gruesome discovery. Fifteen freshly severed human heads in ice coolers. None of the specimens were tagged or identified, and there were critical discrepancies in the paperwork. Incorrect causes of death were printed. The sex of the parts did not match what was listed. Those human heads also belonged to Arthur Rathburn's International Biological Institute.
It had become clear that Rathburn's whole operation was, at the very least, sloppy. This time federal authorities wanted a closer look. Days later, International Biological was raided.
The business here is called International Biological, a company that has advertised in the past as a medical educational service provider. The question here is, were they dealing illegally in human corpses and body parts that sources say can be very valuable on the black market? It was a warehouse of horrors. More than 1,000 unembalmed, unidentified body parts sitting in ice and plenty of well-oiled power saws.
Agents found arms, legs, hands and feet. They found four fully preserved fetuses and freezers full of severed heads frozen together like hamburger patties that Rathburn apparently pried apart with a crowbar. Federal agents seized them all. No charges were filed in the immediate aftermath, but the investigation would continue. As with the process of tracing and identifying the bodies, International Biological never resumed business after the raid.
Arthur Rathburn was on the ropes financially before the investigation. He had already declared bankruptcy a few years earlier. Now Arthur's mortuary license was suspended. He couldn't even work.
to slow down the bleeding. Arthur Rathburn set up a folding table on the street outside of his warehouse and sold the company's remaining assets. Yeah, those electric freezers selling for just $50, those smaller igloo coolers, sources tell me, selling for $10 apiece, and there were dozens of them sold. A Grosse Pointe park man at the center of an FBI investigation for selling bodies in the black market had a yard sale.
This was pre-pandemic, obviously. Arthur Rathburn was officially out of the body brokering business. But soon, he had found a new passion. So where is Rathburn tonight? Well, sources tell us that he has moved up north where he is working to develop genetically engineered trophy deer to be hunted on his 1,000-acre farm. Arthur Rathburn was divorced and homeless by the time he was formally charged in January 2016.
When they arrested him, federal agents found Art living out of a van and sleeping in his empty warehouse. The wait continues for those genetically engineered trophy deer. But in other news, by the time he had been taken into custody, many of the bodies seized from Arthur Rathburn's warehouse two years earlier had been identified. The bomb got dropped on me that my father's head is sitting in the FBI freezer. Not something I wanted to hear, definitely.
That's Tracy Smolka. Her 67-year-old father, Randolph Wright, died from ALS in 2010. The family agreed to donate his body to help with ALS research because that's what Tracy's father would have wanted. Randolph Wright's body was generously donated to a biological research center in Illinois. According to the FBI, Randolph Wright's body ended up in Art Rathburn's warehouse in Detroit, but had been shipped there in separate pieces.
Rathburn purchased Randolph's head for $500 and his torso for $2,900. Below market value, Art enjoyed a bargain. He liked taking advantage of that diseased discount. Arthur Rathburn is a low-life piece of crap SOB who deserves to fry.
The indictment alleges that both Arthur Rathburn and his ex-wife Elizabeth purposely bought diseased bodies infected with HIV, hepatitis, and sepsis because they were cheaper and then resold or rented them for a considerable profit to unwitting doctors and dentists for research and training.
On multiple occasions in 2011 and 2012, the Rathburns sent bloody, infected human body parts to medical conferences at hotels in places like Cambridge, Massachusetts, San Diego, and Washington, D.C. They received as much as $55,000 per rental. The donating families had not agreed to any of this.
But Rathburn was never charged for defrauding the donors. Instead, he and Elizabeth were charged with defrauding their customers, the doctors and researchers who thought they were renting a non-diseased body. This alleged scheme to distribute diseased body parts not only defrauded customers from the monetary value of their contracts, but also exposed them and others to infection. U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuaid said in announcing the indictment,
The alleged conduct risked the health of medical students, dental students, and baggage handlers. Mr. and former Mrs. Rathburn were faced with more than a dozen federal charges, including multiple counts of wire fraud, aiding and abetting, making false statements, and one count of transportation of hazardous materials. Elizabeth Rathburn pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and was sentenced to two years probation.
Arthur Rathburn went to trial. His lawyers argued the matter was simply a contract dispute over the quality of goods better suited for a civil court. Rathburn would later say that the photographs shown during his trial had swayed the jury, regardless of the context. Images so grotesque that one of the jurors asked for counseling and was excused from the trial. Arthur Rathburn was convicted on seven counts of fraud and shipping hazardous materials.
At his sentencing hearing, the 64-year-old Rathburn showed no remorse. He described his Detroit warehouse lab as "perfect" and promised that the "bequests were put to great use." "We have 10,000 diseases in this world. We know how to treat 500 of them," Rathburn told the judge. "The rest need to be studied." Arthur Rathburn had no regrets, but his victims certainly did.
There were hundreds of them with similar stories about donating a loved one's body for a good cause, only two discovered it had been dismembered and sold. Some of them spoke at Rathburn's sentencing in 2018. One man told the judge that finding out his wife's remains ended up in Arthur Rathburn's hands had quote, "...kind of wrecked him. I can't sleep since I found out about this. I couldn't protect her from what happened here. It's made me much less of a man."
Tracy Smolka also testified on her father's behalf. In court, she told Rathburn and the judge, you obtained his head for profit. I hope the money was worth it. I hope your greed was satisfying. Hands, feet, leg bones are all we have. No guarantee they are his. He destroyed her good faith that we had to donate bodies for research. Obviously, you have no shame. I hope you rot in hell. Make sure you tell the devil I sent you.
Arthur Rathburn was sentenced to nine years in prison, but that's only half of the story. Less than a month after International Biological was raided in Detroit, back in January 2014, federal authorities had swarmed another 9,000 square foot facility near the airport in Phoenix, Arizona, almost 2,000 miles away.
Federal agents, some of them in hazmat suits, swarming a Phoenix business. Others investigating a home connected to that company. Part of the stuff they're hauling away, body parts and lots of them. That facility belonged to the Biological Resource Center of Arizona, a whole body donation program and qualified tissue bank that had knowingly sold diseased body parts to people like Arthur Rathburn on multiple occasions.
The need for whole body donors has never been greater. Biological Resource Center connects those who wish to donate their body to science with medical research and education facilities. More than 10 tons of frozen human remains were seized from the BRC Arizona warehouse, including 281 heads, 241 shoulders, 337 legs, and 97 spines, among other things.
They were hauled away in 142 body bags, bags of parts belonging to more than 850 different people. It was a traumatic experience for the federal agents tasked with the job. They'll never forget what they saw that day.
He said he found a cooler filled with male genitalia, a bucket of heads, arms and legs, infected heads, and one of the most disturbing findings, a small woman's head sewn onto a large male torso like Frankenstein and hung up on the wall.
Biological Resource Center of Arizona was owned by a former insurance salesman named Steven Gore. My name is Steve Gore, director of Biological Resource Center. The feds had also searched his house, but Steven Gore had not yet been charged with any crimes.
and he wanted to make that clear on the company's website. So he posted a statement on the front page. Part of it read, quote, On January 21, 2014, the FBI and members of the Attorney General's Office visited Biological Resource Center of Arizona with a search and seizure warrant. Our staff willingly cooperated and answered all of their questions without counsel, and we will continue to cooperate with the authorities to the best of our abilities. As per the Attorney's general message to the public,
Little information has been made available. This lack of information has led many to speculate and to make incorrect conclusions. We hope to know more within the coming days and weeks, at which time we will provide additional information. Please be assured that the staff of Biological Resource Center of Arizona works diligently each day to serve and honor our donors and their families with dignity and respect. We adhere to the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, which governs anatomical donation.
Through our informed consent process, individuals are able to contribute to the advancement of medical education, research, and training. Through our cooperation with the authorities, we are confident factual information is forthcoming that will further demonstrate Biological Resource Center of Arizona's ongoing commitment to donors, their families, the integrity of the donor process, and the mission to improve health care for everyone. Thank you. Stephen Gore
Stephen Gore was arrested about a year later. In October 2015, he pleaded guilty to one charge of illegally conducting an enterprise by knowingly providing diseased and contaminated tissues to vendors and using the donors' bodies against the donors' wishes. Instead of scientific research, BRC Arizona sold the bodies to organizations such as the United States Armed Forces for use in brutal experiments.
This is a man named Jim Stauffer describing what happened to his mother Doris who suffered from Alzheimer's and wanted to offer her body and brain for Alzheimer's research. She was then supposedly strapped in a chair on some sort of an apparatus and a detonation took place underneath her to basically kind of get an idea of what the human body goes through when a vehicle is hit by an IED.
The military purchased Doris Stauffer from the Body Resource Center of Arizona and blew her up. Her misled son, Jim, had been given a box of ashes days after Doris' death. Years later, a reporter from Reuters would tell him that those ashes did not belong to his mother. "I don't see a pathway of ever getting past this," Jim Stauffer told ABC 15.
Every time there's a memory, every time there's a photograph you look at, there's this ugly thing that happened just right there, staring right at you. The FBI discovered that the automobile industry used other donors as crash test dummies. Other industries dropped bodies from a helicopter to test gravity, I guess. And many of those bodies had not been adequately screened for infectious diseases. According to Stephen Gore, that was an unfortunate oversight.
In a letter to the sentencing judge, Gore said he should have been more involved in the supervision of his employees and could have been more open about the donation process on his company's brochure. "When deciding which donors could be eligible to donate, I should have hired a medical director rather than relying on medical knowledge from books or the internet," he wrote. Stephen Gore was sentenced to one year in prison and four years probation and ordered to pay $100,000 in restitution.
The family members of the donors were unsatisfied with the punishment. Two groups were escorted out of the courtroom after yelling at Gore, demanding to know what happened to their loved ones' remains. I'm just thoroughly disgusted. I'm just... Humanity is just stooped to its lowest low.
That's Gwen Aloia. In 2013, during her husband Lewis' final days in hospice care, she signed papers to donate his body to a biological resource center for cancer research. A few months later, she saw the company's warehouse being raided on the news. Eventually, the FBI contacted Gwen Aloia to inform her they'd found Lewis' severed head in a freezer.
The Aloyas, the Stauffers, and dozens of other victims' families filed suit against Stephen Gore and various other people and places connected to BRC Arizona. The lawsuits alleged that Stephen Gore mishandled their loved ones' remains and committed fraud by claiming the bodies would be used for medical research. The families were seeking unspecified damages. "He didn't care about the families, and he didn't care about the people, and he didn't care about the memories," Jim Stauffer told ABC 15.
If I can be a little small part of his personal financial destruction, I don't care. 33 plaintiffs are claiming that a company called Biological Resource Center lied about what would happen to their loved one's remains after donation.
The lawsuit would eventually be decided at a civil trial, but before that was settled, additional arrests were made in connection to Arthur Rathburn's chop shop. Tonight, a major break in the case. A Chicago-area father and son now federally charged for allegedly knowingly selling diseased body parts.
On April 11th, 2019, Donald Green Sr. and Donald Green Jr., the owners of Biological Resource Center of Illinois, no relation to Stephen Gore's operation, were arrested in Chicago for also selling diseased body parts. Their warehouse had been raided a year after BRC Arizona. Green Sr. was charged with wire fraud and sentenced to two years in prison.
Back in Arizona, the civil trial against Stephen Gore began on October 27, 2019. For the first time, the public heard the graphic details of what was found at the Biological Resource Center facility in Phoenix. The head, arms, and legs had been removed and stacked on top of each other inside the cooler. And in some of those cases, it appeared that the male genitalia had been removed off of the torso.
During opening statements, the plaintiff's lawyers, David Tissell and Michael Berg, argued that Stephen Gore's business was not transparent in its seemingly altruistic pro-research marketing pitch, when in reality, the company was cutting up people's bodies after they died and selling them to other entities for a profit.
The defense argued that Stephen Gore had never set out to defraud anyone. Every single donor or a family member had signed a consent form that clearly states that the bodies could be, quote, disarticulated, which is common language in the industry, Gore's lawyer added. After two weeks of testimony from doctors, law enforcement, and victims, a civil jury awarded $58 million to 10 of the 21 plaintiffs.
Only the families that testified were compensated or were supposed to be compensated. Unfortunately, Stephen Gore had few assets to his name. Whether or not Steve Gore has assets or other people have assets, that's really not the point. We're really hoping that we're shining a bright light on what's been going on in this country. People really becoming grave robbers.
This is a landmark verdict," Michael Berg, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told the media. "The best part here is that the jury sent a message to people like Gore, who are doing this around the country. 50 million in punitive damages is a warning." Attorney Michael Berg and his partner David Tassell would soon find out that warning was too little too late.
That same year, Berg and Tissell would find themselves representing a similar group of people in Colorado. People who had trusted a local business to treat their deceased loved ones with dignity and respect, only to discover their loved ones were butchered and sold. Even in the afterlife, we are nothing but commodities. A funeral director and her family are accused of profiting off the dead on this episode of Swindled.
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Loved ones are coming forward tonight after dozens of containers of forgotten ashes were found sitting in the basement of a funeral home on the Western Slope. Frank Tucker was a disgraced district attorney in Colorado. In the late 70s, he had been convicted of embezzling county funds for personal use. Frank had double-billed two counties for expenses incurred at a convention and lied about some long-distance phone calls to his future wife in California. As a result, he resigned from his position and spent six months in prison.
Afterwards, Frank Tucker moved to Montrose on the western slope of Colorado and bought the Montrose Valley Funeral Home in 1987. Unfortunately, his new career as a funeral director did not get off to a promising start. According to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, a family sued Frank Tucker in his first year of ownership after an embalming mishap involving a 17-year-old girl.
Her parents called the open casket funeral a "disaster" because of Frank Tucker's botched operation. The following years featured fraud accusations and tax evasion investigations. All of these headaches can take a toll on a man. By the early 2000s, Frank Tucker was in poor health. In 2002, Frank hired a woman named Megan Hess to manage the Montrose Valley Funeral Home.
Megan arranged the funerals and services in Frank's absence and worked directly with the families. She seemed to enjoy the work, but it was short-lived. In January 2006, Frank Tucker died from pancreatic cancer, and Megan Hess was fired six months later by Frank's widow, Debbie Tucker, who ran the operation herself until 2012.
By October 2015, a new funeral home had moved into the Montrose Valley Funeral Home's former space, and much to the new owner's surprise, they found a basement full of unclaimed cremains. There were 170 different containers in all shapes and sizes that dated as far back as 1947. Some of the ashes were housed in urns labeled with names. Other treatments were a bit more unique.
According to the Daily Sentinel, "One specimen was relegated to a Vlasic pickle jar with only a scrawled question mark on the lid. Others had specific instructions for disposition that were never carried out." Scatter in the Mountains read Charlene A. Jim's box of remains. Charlene died in 1980. She had been sitting on a shelf in that basement ever since. If it's any consolation, she wasn't alone.
Baby boy Weber spent his 48th birthday in that same basement. He had been cremated back in 1968 when he was stillborn. The new owners made a valiant effort to return the cremains to relatives or to honor their documented final wishes. Of course, the families were surprised to hear the fate of their loved ones. Ann Szczesinski's teenage son Brandon was among the found cremains. She read his name on a list in the newspaper.
"I totally flipped out," Ms. Szczesinski told the Denver Post. "I had no idea what they were talking about." "How could this have happened?" she wondered. Ann says she remembers working only with Megan Hess for her son's arrangements. This couldn't be true. Hess gave her a custom-carved box containing Brandon's ashes and everything. Fourteen years later, the new funeral home took a look. He said the supposed remains Megan Hess had given Ann Szczesinski looked more like kitty litter than ashes.
I just hope that lady gets what's coming to her," the re-grieving mother told the Post. Megan Hess couldn't be responsible for all of the abandoned cremains. Her family didn't move to Colorado until 1980. Some of the ashes had been sitting in that basement long before Megan Hess had even been born. As for any forgotten cremains that may have accrued while she worked at the Montrose Valley Funeral Home, Megan Hess blames Frank's widow, Debbie Tucker. She was the owner.
even though not one of the 170 containers was dated during the time period when Debbie Tucker solely owned the place. Whatever. That was old news. Megan Hess had her own operation to worry about these days. Shortly after being fired, Hess opened Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors in Montrose. At a time when personalized professional service and respect is of the utmost importance, let our family take care of your family, she wrote on the company's website.
Through Sunset Mesa, Megan Hess became a friendly face in the Rocky Mountain community of 20,000. She spent every waking hour working or volunteering to grow her business. Megan wrote a funeral service advice column for the Montrose Daily Press Weekly and hosted a talk show on the local radio. She also specialized in grief and family counseling. She sold insurance, whatever you need.
In the little free time she sometimes found, Megan Hess would share a pedicure with her daughter or go to a rodeo with her parents and brother. But most days she was devising new ways to make money. In 2014, Megan Hess launched Colorado Cremations. "Colorado Cremations is a simple, basic, dignified cremation service," she told the Montrose Daily Press, "whereas my Sunset Mesa operation is a multi-million dollar business."
Colorado Cremation offered a simple service, as told the newspaper, but it is still dignified. In other words, Colorado Cremation was cheaper. No bells and whistles, just a straightforward cremation.
At Sunset Mesa Hess's other business, cremations started at around $1,000. Of course, that included the flannel box covering hand-woven by Megan's mother, Shirley Koch. At Colorado Cremations, one could get a straightforward body burning for $695. It was the most budget-friendly cremation service in the entire state, probably, and you could complete the entire process online. Megan Hess was able to control the cost because she owned the crematory.
"I control the cost, and I control the environment, the timing," she told the Daily Press. Colorado Cremations was family-owned and operated. Megan Hess told the newspaper that she personally oversaw the entire process. Her mother, Shirley, usually prepared the bodies, and her father, Alan Koch, manned the crematorium. The deceased never leave her family's care, Hess claimed. "Why go to someone who owns their own crematory?" Megan asked rhetorically.
because then you know you're getting your loved one's ashes back." End quote. Thanks, I uh, didn't know I needed to worry about that. Anyway, how's business?
"Business is excellent," Megan Hess told the Montrose Daily Press. "I really care about my people." And she could prove it. "It has been more than just a funeral home. Sunset Mesa does cremations, as well as serving as a broker of body parts used for education and research." Back in 2009, Megan Hess launched a non-profit called Sunset Mesa Funeral Foundation.
One subsidiary was called Donor Services. It was a body brokering service. Megan's mom Shirley would harvest body parts from donated corpses in the back of the funeral home and sell them to research labs and medical schools. It was a public service, Hess has repeatedly said. Be a hero. Be an organ donor. A brochure for Donor Services solicited.
Megan Hess told Reuters when they came calling in 2016,
Reuters journalist Brian Groh had heard about Sunset Mesa's combination funeral home, crematory, and body brokering service while working on a five-part expose on the body trade for the news agency. Sunset Mesa caught Groh's attention because it was the only place in America that housed all three services under the same roof. Perfectly legal in Colorado, by the way. Megan Hess was a unicorn. But that wasn't the only reason the Reuters journalist wanted to talk to her.
Megan Hess's biography on the Sunset Mesa website listed a PhD in mortuary science as part of her credentials. Reuters discovered that no such degree exists in the United States. Soon after, a reporter asked Hess about it. The PhD listing on the website was replaced with her high school degree and a quote, "love for veterinary medicine." Reuters stated that the mere existence of Megan Hess's three-pronged business raised ethical concerns among funeral industry veterans.
What do you think? Is it a conflict of interest to sell body parts next to one of the few places in town with a fresh stream of dead bodies from surrounding counties coming through its doors? Sounds efficient if you ask me. Not to mention that giant furnace in the crematory doesn't leave behind much evidence that a body ever existed at all. You could still charge for the cremation. Bags of recycled carbon and body bag zippers are tough to differentiate with the naked eye, you know.
Let's face it, there's treasure being thrown out with the ashes. Do you know how much you can get for a complete human torso on the open market? Come on, that's easy money. How could you not be tempted, Shirley? Especially with that chainsaw you're always lugging around. Nah, there was nothing to worry about. Megan Hess and her parents, Shirley and Alan Koch, were morally righteous people. They would never do something so cruel just to line their pockets. Or would they?
Reuters spoke with a former employee of Sunset Mesa named Carrie Escher. Carrie said that one day Shirley Koch showed her a collection of gold teeth she had pulled off of corpses. Carrie said Shirley told her that she had sold a similar batch a year earlier and funded the whole family's vacation to Disneyland. Other employees claimed they'd heard Megan Hess bragging about making $40,000 a month from selling bodies. But again, there was nothing illegal about what they were doing, as long as they had the donor's consent.
However, when Reuters published the article in January 2018, the news agency revealed that the FBI and Colorado state regulators were actively investigating Megan Hess and Sunset Mesa. Megan Hess provided the Montrose Daily Press with a written response to the story.
has said the Reuters article, titled, "FBI Scrutinizes Funeral Home Running a Side Business Selling Human Body Parts," has tried to, quote, "tarnish" her reputation. The funeral home and donor services have never received any written or verbal communication from the FBI or any other federal authorities regarding the business and its practices.
Megan Hess also defended her credentials in the statement and reiterated her position that donor services provided a community service by harvesting body parts for science. "Without donation, there is no research, and without research there is no cure. Such donations enable medical professionals to learn about the processes and effects of disease and to develop new surgical skills and procedures," Hess said.
With the generous support of our donors, Donor Services has been and will continue to provide this invaluable service to those who need the resources necessary to further the education of medical communities and the continued education of new and exciting surgical procedures that are on the horizon. I have worked tirelessly in western Colorado for more than 15 years to proudly serve my community as a funeral director.
Donation is an option for families, just like burial or cremation. It has been devastating to read such false statements about my business and character. I want the community to know that I am standing strong and will not let anyone interfere with my mission. I want to thank my clients, colleagues, and my family for your support. Your visits, phone calls, texts, and emails have meant so much.
A few weeks later, on February 6, 2018, Sunset Mesa, Colorado Cremations and Donor Services were raided by the FBI. The FBI raids a Colorado funeral home. This comes after complaints that it doubles as a donor services facility. Support for Swindled comes from Rocket Money.
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One week had passed since Megan Hess's funeral home and related businesses were searched by federal authorities. The FBI stayed quiet about what it was trying to find. At this point, no arrests had been made.
The investigation arose after Colorado's Department of Regulatory Agencies received nearly a dozen complaints from the public about Megan Hess over the past six years. The state would not go into detail about what those complaints alleged, but reports soon emerged of shoddy record keeping and bombings and cremations performed without permission. Some families suspected they had received the wrong ashes. A few knew it for a fact because they had them privately tested.
A dry cement mix had been substituted for their loved ones' cremains, their bodies presumably sold. Now covering Colorado at 5, the state shuts down a funeral home after a family says they got cement instead of ashes of their loved one. That's just one of the accusations against the Sunset Mesa funeral directors. The owners have also been scrutinized for running a side business that donates body parts for scientific research.
Megan Hess denied the allegations and accused former employees and a former competitor of conspiracy. But instead of presenting evidence to the state in support of her case, on February 6, 2018, Megan Hess agreed to relinquish her funeral and crematory licenses. Sunset Mesa's website disappeared from the internet that same day.
"Thank you to all my friends and family who have reached out during the last few weeks," Megan has shared on Facebook. "It hasn't been easy or pretty, but I'm just taking it a day at a time." Megan then listed her black Cadillac, a coffee maker, and a boat for sale. At the same time, the FBI was sharing a questionnaire for customers of Sunset Mesa, Colorado Cremations and Donor Services to share their experiences.
"Was the decedent buried, cremated or donated?" it asked. "Was consent given to donate the body?" "If yes, what was being donated?" "And were you told the company would sell what was donated?" "How much did you pay?" "What documents were you given?" "Do you suspect that the cremains/ashes given to you are not those of the decedent?" "If yes, why?" "Do you want the cremains you received to be tested?" "Check yes or no." The response was overwhelming.
The FBI set up a dedicated phone hotline to manage the calls. Determining who had been affected would take months, but eventually people like Danielle McCarthy received an unimaginable call.
Danielle's husband, David McCarthy, died from a heart attack in the middle of the night on Father's Day 2017. David was a military veteran.
Danielle agreed to donate some of his tissue to Megan Hesse's donor services in hopes that it could be studied and potentially help other veterans. The McCarthy family received about a coffee container amount of ashes from the funeral home a few days later. "I know we had volunteered for some tissue donation," Danielle told the Denver Post, "but we definitely expected more back."
After the raid, the FBI informed Danielle McCarthy of David's true fate. He was never cremated. He was cut in half and shipped to some man in Detroit. It was shocking for Danielle, but everything made so much more sense in hindsight, especially a conversation she had with Shirley Koch when she went to pick up David's ashes. Shirley commented, quote,
Danielle McCarthy recounted that conversation to the Denver Post and said, "I just remember thinking at that moment in time, 'Who the fuck says something like that in the middle of shit like this? Where did that come from?' But after that call from the FBI, everything made sense." Judy Kressler also received that call. Judy's father, Harold Kressler, died in 2015. He wanted his body donated to science.
He had lung cancer that was caused by being a former uranium miner. And his thoughts were maybe scientists studying that cancer could someday help find a cure for cancer. And that was what he wanted to do. But that's not what happened. Instead, the Kressler family was given a container of fake ashes from Sunset Mesa. And Harold's body was plastinated and sold to somebody in Saudi Arabia.
My dad's entire body was sold to Global Anatomy Project, which plastinates bodies, and he was sold to Saudi Arabia. So there's the FBI, so there's no way that's his ashes. So she sold his body, and I'm sure it had nothing to do with cancer research, and then she gave his fake ashes.
Harold Kressler's ashes were tested after the raid. They contained the remains of other people and burned trash. Miss Hess and Miss Koch burned trash with human remains because these people were trash to them, Judy Kressler told the Montrose Daily Press. Because of the greed of these two grave robbers, my family will never be able to get his body back from Saudi Arabia.
At the time, Judy Kressler had suspected something was wrong. She filed a complaint against Megan Hess to the Department of Regulatory Agencies in April 2016. "Megan Hess took possession of our beloved Harold Kressler and treated his 95-pound body like a science experiment," she wrote in the letter. "There wasn't much left of Dad after cancer ravaged his body but skin and bones. We believe that Hess may have harvested his skin and bones for her own profit."
No action was taken for almost two years. There were nearly 600 similar stories. Connie Hansen was informed that her son Frederick's body was chopped up and distributed by Megan Hess. The FBI told me his head was sent to so-and-so. His two shoulders went somewhere else. I said, I don't want to hear anymore.
Ruthie Pettyjohn told Fox 40 that she is still haunted by what she was told. The FBI informed Ruthie that Sunset Mesa dismembered her son Brian with a power saw. They desecrated his little body and just cut him up in pieces and sent him all over the place. I go to sleep with the visions of him being dismembered with a power saw. Denise Henning paid $2,000 to Sunset Mesa for her mother's cremation.
Federal investigators told Denise that Hess and company had shipped the body within 24 hours to a broker that had been caught defrosting a body in a parking lot with a garden hose. When Deborah Shum's best friend, Laura Lee Johnson, passed away from bladder cancer in June 2017, the hospice service recommended Sunset Mesa for cremation. Shirley Koch arrived at the house alone and asked Deborah for help carrying Laura Lee's body outside.
"She was one of the most inappropriate people I've ever met in my life," Shum told the Denver Post. The FBI would later tell Deborah Shum that Laura Lee's body was shipped out the door the next day. "Her entire body was sold by Sunset Mesa before I even got there to make arrangements for a cremation. She gave me fake ashes. At this time, the location of her body is unknown."
The family of Raymond Hutt had their own bizarre experience with Sunset Mesa. Raymond's daughters Janet and Lana told the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel that Shirley Koch went into intricate detail about the embalming process, even though they had never given the funeral home permission to embalm their father. "She just kept going on and on about how good Dad's veins were," Lana Hutt said. "It was crazy." When confronted, Megan Hess reportedly got angry.
The family suspects Megan sabotaged their father's funeral service in retaliation. The sisters told the Daily Sentinel that Sunset Mesa ruined the music at the memorial and left attendees stranded at the cemetery. Natasha Olsen had a similar incident with the company when she cremated her mother. Gina Pace and her dog Buckwheat died in a car accident in 2017. Natasha told the Denver Post that Sunset Mesa tried to embalm her mother when she was supposed to have been cremated.
Megan Hess hovered over them closely at a family viewing, Natasha said. Hess reportedly panicked when Gina's brother tried to move a blanket that covered her body. Gina's brother hugged his sister's body anyway and, in retrospect, said it felt like her arm was already detached. "It can't be fixed," Freddie Hancock told Denver 7 after learning her husband, Thomas, had been sold without her consent.
They can't put his head back on his body. They can't put his arms and legs back on his body. That's part of my nightmare. I can see his body parts floating in space, and I keep trying to grab them and put them back, and I can't. Hundreds of families were re-traumatized by the actions of Megan Hess. It was a disgusting betrayal. There was anger. There was grief. There was guilt.
I find myself apologizing to her all the time. Rick Neuendorf told the Denver Post about his wife Cherie. It hurts every time because I don't know where the body is. Ever since she's passed away, I've sat and I've talked to her to tell her about my day, tell her how I was feeling and stuff like that. It's helped me to get through. I don't even have that anymore. There are no ashes.
Cherie Neuendorf loved the holidays so much that Christmas music was played at her funeral. Now Rick Neuendorf can't bring himself to decorate their home, even a little bit. After discovering what Sunset Mesa did to his wife's body and the fake ashes, I just couldn't do it anymore, Rick told the newspaper. It brings back so much sadness, these things we enjoyed together. This really has shattered me. Our wishes were that when we were both gone...
The families victimized by Megan Hess and her family have found solace in each other. They meet in public. They organize online. How could anyone else possibly relate? Colorado Mesa University offered to test the cremains given to families by Sunset Mesa free of charge.
They found kitty litter, cement, tile grout, wire, and dental fillings. Everything was mixed together. It was as if Megan Hess had a large bucket of unwanted ashes with a big scoop stuck in it. Which she did. Two of them. Megan Hess had previously acknowledged to state regulators that she kept two five-gallon buckets of unwanted ashes on hand at Sunset Mesa. This led to speculation that these buckets were the source of what the families were given.
Analyzing those ashes and matching DNA of body parts caused the FBI's investigation to drag on forever. The townsfolk of Montrose only whispered about the raid, but some of the affected families lost their patience. In March 2018, two women went to the funeral home to confront Megan Hess to her face about the fake remains. Megan Hess chased them off the property with her car and followed them into town. She bruised one of the women's legs with her bumper.
Megan Hess was charged with reckless driving and reckless endangerment. She pleaded guilty to one count of improper backing and paid a $30 fine. That wasn't the only way Megan Hess kept busy without the funeral home. She was also an event planner. She owned a catering business. Megan also launched a cupcake company called Truffles & Company. She offered a flavor called Death by Chocolate. In July 2018, the McCarthy family ran into Megan Hess selling hot dogs at the Montrose County Fair.
The woman who butchered their husband and father was still walking free, still showing her face in public. No criminal charges had been filed against Megan Hess, but some families found no reason to wait and filed suit. Megan Hess responded in a motion to dismiss the first lawsuit filed by the family of Cactus Hollenbeck, who claimed the remains contained small parts from a watch and zippers. Cactus had died in his pajamas.
An allegation is not evidence, Hess wrote. No matter how sensational the accusations or how cleverly written a complaint with hysterics and exaggeration for the purpose of having it published in the media to influence the opinion of others, there's only one thing that matters, evidence. A new lawsuit with more than 60 plaintiffs has been filed against Sunset Mesa funeral directors in Montrose, the funeral home accused of doubling as a body broker.
By mid-2019, Megan has faced six different civil lawsuits, including multiple class action lawsuits, one with more than 60 plaintiffs, filed by attorneys Michael Berg and David Tassell. The class action named every entity associated with Sunset Mesa, including the Montrose County Coroner, who had frequently referred the business, and a hospice that transferred bodies to Sunset Mesa without family consent.
Almost all of the periphery defendants, including the coroner and the hospice, were later dismissed from the suit. The victims' families continued to wait. These people deserve to know why what was done to them was done to them and why they weren't given a choice, why their loved ones were stolen from them and they were given back dry cement or sand and told this was your loved one's ashes.
All we can do is shake our heads on this one. And evil...
An evil funeral home director has been arrested in Colorado, as she should be. Her name is Megan Hess, and she's accused of selling body parts of her clients. Unsuspecting families are also the victims in this case. Investigators also say she gave those poor people fake ashes after telling them their loved ones would be cremated. My next guest agrees this is beyond trifling.
On March 12, 2020, after a two-year investigation, a grand jury indictment alleged that Megan Hess and her mother, Shirley Koch, sold hundreds of bodies for research without the family's permission. Quote,
Moreover, in the few instances where families agreed to donation, Hess & Koch sold the remains of those decedents beyond what was authorized by the family, which was often limited to small tissue samples, tumors, or portions of skin. The Justice Department also said Hess & Koch shipped bodies and body parts that tested positive for or belonged to people who had died from infectious diseases, including hepatitis B and C and HIV. After certifying to buyers that the remains were disease-free,
The fraud generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue. Sunset Mesa targeted poor people with their low prices and basic services. 43-year-old Megan Hess and 66-year-old Shirley Koch were arrested and charged with six counts of mail fraud and three counts of illegal transportation of hazardous materials. Both women pleaded not guilty. They were released on a $100,000 bond and ordered not to leave Colorado.
Since then, it has been a series of excruciating delays. Megan Hess had COVID when she was arrested, so every federal officer in contact with her was forced to quarantine. Shirley Koch underwent a competency evaluation. She was deemed fit to stand trial, but then she hired new representation who, in December 2020, requested a 180-day postponement to sort through the hundreds of thousands of pages of evidence. It has been maddening.
At some point, Megan Hess and Shirley Koch turned against one another. Koch disavowed knowledge of the body brokering business and told investigators that her daughter was the brains behind it all. Shirley said Megan was the one who managed the buying and selling. She knew the doctors, handled the billing, filled out the paperwork. Shirley Koch painted herself as a lowly butcher who just followed the boss's orders.
Megan Hess, on the other unidentified hand, wasn't offering much information at all. Did you hear my question, ma'am? I did not. I'm sorry. Who were the board of directors of Sunset Mesa? There wasn't one. We were a board of one. Was that you then? Yes. When was the first time a body or parts of a body were sold from Sunset Mesa? I'm not answering that. On what basis? My first amendment right. Okay.
How many people do you think were sold? How many bodies do you think were sold? I'm not answering that either. Same reason? Yes. If your child or your mother or your father had passed away and you had paid for them to be cremated but later found out that someone had sold them, how would that make you feel? I'm not answering that. On what basis? On the basis of my commitment, right?
Did you obtain written permission from the family members or from... I'm not answering that either. Well, I think you should allow me to finish my question. If I may, did you obtain written permission from family members or from the decedent prior to their death to sell their body or body parts? I'm not answering those questions, sir.
Did you represent to InnoVed, American Plasticization, or other body handlers that you had permission of the family to sell their body? I'm not answering that question, sir.
What was the average price you were paid for each body that you sold as a whole body? I'm not answering that. What was the average price you were paid for body parts that you sold? I'm not answering those questions. The year 2020 came and went. It had been almost three years since the raid at Sunset Mesa, and it seemed like the wheels of justice were turning slower than usual.
Finally, in September 2020, the victims' families received some unwelcome news. At a long-awaited town hall meeting, federal prosecutors announced a possible plea deal that would cap Megan Hess and Shirley Koch's prison time at about 12 and a half years. The plea deal also required $491,000 restitution and a $1.2 million asset forfeiture. The families did not think the proposed plea deal was adequate.
600 victims? Are you kidding me? And you're going to give them 10 years and 12 years? Uncalled for. Feels like we're being victimized again. Robbing me of the one part of this system I thought could give me a little bit of closure in that I could stand in that courtroom and look these people in the eye and tell them what they've done to me that I will struggle with for the rest of my life.
While the lawyers hammered out the details on Heson Koch's plea bargains, some civil lawsuits were settled. On July 15, 2020, a district judge awarded Cactus Hollenbach's widow $468,010, the maximum non-economic damages allowed under Colorado statute, for "severe emotional and physical distress over the way her husband's body was treated by Sunset Mesa."
On November 23, 2020, another group of plaintiffs was awarded a total of $8 million after a court ruled that Sunset Mesa had acted in bad faith. On April 10, 2021, another multi-party lawsuit was settled, the largest yet. Sunset Mesa was ordered to pay $16 million to 30 people whose family members were sold. The judge calculated the damages by adding up the list of body parts and assigning them a value.
"How do you value that? How do you value walking around on a daily basis, thinking about your family members and translate that into monetary figures?" Attorney Keith Killian asked the Montrose Daily Press. "You really can't. It's just a hole in your heart you can't really patch. But I appreciate that the court acknowledged the significance of the losses to my clients. How do you put a dollar amount on a part of someone's body? It's what the market will pay, but it doesn't really measure the suffering of the family."
The dollar amount was meaningless anyway. Even if all their assets were seized and sold, Megan Hess and Shirley Koch would be destitute after paying off just a few names on the ever-expanding list. And it's not like it would change anything even if they could. Not everything is monetary, Deborah Shum testified. I feel like my normal grief process has been stolen too. It's all melded together now. I can't think about Laura Lee without thinking about her being chopped up. This is for me the most traumatic event of my life.
On July 6, 2022, Megan Hess pleaded guilty to a single count of mail fraud. "I'm taking responsibility," she told the judge. "I'm here to accept the plea. The families believe I went beyond the scope of the consent forms. Again, no responsibility, no accountability, no remorse." "It has been 53 months since this legal travesty began," Megan Hess said in her statement to the judge. "53 long months."
53 months of suffering for my community, the families involved, my family and my child. Making the decision to consider a plea was not easy. The grief sustained will not end, but what can end is this ongoing unresolved torturous battle. I come before the court completely broken and ask for the court to accept my plea. Accepting my ownership and responsibility of making this right. The journey to resolution with everyone involved begins with today. This is my responsibility to resolve.
Shirley Koch pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud a week later. Their sentencings are scheduled for early 2023. Both women are facing up to 20 years in prison, though based on the plea deal, the expectation and recommended range is between five and six years. Many of the families are not thrilled with the potential sentences. "I believe a grifter of this magnitude deserves a lot more prison time than that," Deborah Shum told the Daily Sentinel. Megan Hess had changed their lives forever.
And I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about that woman chopping bodies up with her chains. Okay, this shit keeps me up at night. It does. This shit keeps me up at night. I wake up at 3 o'clock in the morning and I picture that woman dismembering bodies. Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen, with original music by Trevor Howard, a.k.a. Deformer, a.k.a. Red Listerine.
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