It starts with pointed questions as he meets with families in the conference room at Rundus Funeral Home & Crematory in Broomfield, where Dudley is the general manager and funeral director. How is their loved one’s body going to be handled? Who will be caring for them? When, where and how will they be cremated or put in a casket?

Sometimes it comes out of the blue, like when a man called Dudley three years after Rundus cremated his loved one because he couldn’t stop thinking about whether or not he actually had the correct cremains.

“His mind just got wondering and he needed reassurance,” Dudley said. “Like, ‘How do I know this is in fact my person in the urn?'”

Whether it’s pointed questions from prospective clients or phone calls years after the fact, recent scandals in the state’s funeral industry have shaken Coloradans’ trust in the professionals who care for their deceased loved ones, funeral directors and industry experts told The Denver Post.

While Colorado lawmakers have made significant strides in adding state regulations to prevent future scandals, rehabilitating the funeral industry’s reputation is a more complicated task.

“The trust that’s been broken here, it’s going to take a long while for us to restore it,” said Matt Whaley, president of the Colorado Funeral Directors Association.

The effect of Colorado’s notoriously lax funeral home regulations burst into public view in 2018, when an FBI raid on Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors in Montrose found that mother-daughter team Megan Hess and Shirley Koch stole and sold hundreds of bodies around the world to turn a profit.

Hess is now serving a 20-year prison sentence and Koch is serving a 15-year sentence.

Coloradans are still seeing the fallout of more recent scandals, like the active investigation into Davis Mortuary owner (and former Pueblo County coroner) Brian Cotter, who operated the mortuary where state inspectors found 24 decomposing bodies in a hidden room in August.

Dudley is often at a loss for words when he thinks about the scandals, like what happened at the Return to Nature funeral home in Penrose, where owners Jon and Carie Hallford allowed 191 bodies, stacked on top of each other, to decompose for over four years while giving families fake cremains.

The Hallfords both face decades-long prison sentences after pleading guilty in their state criminal cases.

“Even when we’re transferring (the deceased) from a cot to a dressing table, we’re making sure their head doesn’t bang. We’re treating them as if they’re still alive, with care and respect. That you could let those people languish for years… how could you do that?” Dudley said. “How could you sit in front of a family and hand them an urn knowing full well it’s Quikrete?”

So when the man called him out of the blue asking about his loved one’s cremains, Dudley explained that every person who is cremated gets a metal disk with a unique set of numbers that stays with them through the whole process and is zip-tied to the bag of cremains that are returned to families.

“I said, ‘Tell me that number. Don’t tell me the name of your person. I’ll go back to our cremation log and tell you the name associated with the number,'” Dudley said. “I came back, said I have that number associated with this person, and he just said, ‘Oh, thank God.'”

Scandals had statewide, local ripple effects

Cases of industry workers mishandling bodies in Montrose, Penrose, Denver and Pueblo have had a far-reaching effect on Colorado’s funeral home industry, said Kim Bridges, who owns the parent company that oversees three metro Denver funeral homes, including Rundus.

“When these things started happening, it was awful for the industry,” she said. “It makes everyone look at the industry with skepticism and that’s a shame because you need to be able to trust the people you entrust your loved one to.”

Bridges Funeral Services, which Bridges owns with her husband, also oversees funeral and mortuary facilities in New Mexico, Tennessee and Florida.

The uptick in funeral directors and staff encountering families who are anxious about cremating or burying their loved ones is not limited to Rundus, said Whaley, who has worked in the funeral home industry for 38 years and is now market director at Dignity Memorial.

More people are also asking to witness cremations to make sure they know exactly what is happening to their loved one, he said.

When Dudley encounters people with questions or doubts about the funeral and cremation process, he tries to be as transparent as possible, answering their questions with as much detail as they want and offering tours of the facility.

For most, the offer is enough to calm their fears, Dudley said. But about a third of those want to see everything, from the plain-but-clean room lined with cabinets and counters where the deceased are prepared for services, to the massive, gray crematory that looks similar to a metal shipping container.

Whaley, Dudley and Bridges all shared the same sentiment: Families asking more questions about the funeral process is a good thing and should be welcomed.

“If someone doesn’t want to give a consumer all the information they’re asking for, shame on them,” Bridges said. “The consumer should go somewhere else and ask for a tour of the place.”

That kind of simple and up-front communication is the right way to rebuild trust with the community after a crisis, said Andy Boian, founder and CEO of the Colorado- and California-based public relations firm Dovetail Solutions.

Boian and other public relations experts who spoke to The Denver Post commented on the scandals hypothetically, as neither have worked directly with funeral homes on this issue.

Good communication includes walking people through the process, making sure they understand what’s happening and circling back regularly, he said.

“At the end of the day, that would ratify and settle a lot of people’s concerns,” Boian said.

That transparency now extends into Colorado’s industry regulations after state legislators, motivated by recent scandals, passed new laws to prevent the same kind of situation from happening at funeral homes or mortuaries ever again.

Passed in 2024, the three new laws require funeral directors and other industry professionals to obtain licenses; for state regulators to perform routine inspections at facilities; and for businesses to obtain consent and share more information about body donation.

Colorado officials say the new regulations are already making a difference — for example, bodies discovered in a hidden room at Davis Mortuary in Pueblo were found by state inspectors during their first-ever visit to the facility — though that impact isn’t necessarily felt by the people doing the work every day.

Bridges jokes that her staff are more nervous about a drop-by visit from her than from state inspectors.

“We welcome all oversight because we conduct ourselves in such a way that it’s not an issue,” she said. “If you have to run around and get things right before someone comes in, you’re doing something wrong.”

That ethos, Boian said, also represents another avenue for funeral homes to redeem themselves in the eyes of the community.

“There’s also an opportunity here as well, and that is to be the best and most proficient at your craft,” he said.

Overcoming scandal, moving forward

Crisis management experts told The Denver Post that while the public is usually willing to forgive and forget scandals if those involved do a good job communicating, the fraught nature of dealing with death makes this more complicated.

“It’s really tricky when it’s something sensitive like this,” said Kara Schmiemann, senior director of crisis communications at Red Banyan, a national crisis PR firm with offices in Denver. “When it has to do with our loved ones, these are the most difficult industries when they face a crisis because there’s a lot of emotion packed in there.”

And while the scandals at a handful of Colorado funeral homes may have sown skepticism among the general public, they had the opposite effect on Arapahoe Community College student Luke Olson.

Olson, who studies in the mortuary science program, was pursuing a mechanical engineering degree before he switched career paths. He said he was drawn to the hospitality of the field and the family connection — his grandfather was a mortician for a tiny town of 90 people.

“Going into the practice is emboldening to me and a new generation of death care practitioners who want to uphold the law and repair the damage that’s been done to Colorado’s reputation in the past,” Olson said.

Contrary to the stereotype about funeral home owners trying to profit off of the bereaved, people who get into the profession are not doing it for the money, Olson said, describing the wages as “very middle class.” (Funeral directors earn $51,607 per year on average, according to the National Funeral Directors Association.)

“You are going into it with the anticipation of serving your community and serving families,” he said.

Olson’s perspective is common among people studying mortuary science, said Faith Haug, mortuary science program chair at Arapahoe Community College.

“One of the things I appreciate with where the younger generation of funeral directors want to go is that it’s more family-centered, where things are not just spirited away to a back room and nobody knows what goes on,” Haug said.

And if there is a sliver of good to be found in the horrors carried out at a handful of Colorado funeral homes, it’s the chance that people will also want to be more involved in the death process for their loved ones as a result, Haug said.

“We have taken families out of the process in many ways, and all these things coming to light show that they deserve more transparency and more involvement if that’s what they want,” she said.

Soledad Cordova was born two months premature at a hospital in Pueblo in 2012. She lost consciousness after she was born and died on the day of her birth, despite the medical staff’s best efforts to revive the infant.

Cordova entrusted Soledad’s body to his longtime friends, brothers Brian and Chris Cotter, owners of Davis Mortuary in Pueblo. They agreed to cremate her remains, and gave the family an urn with what they believed to be Soledad’s ashes. The family buried the urn alongside Cordova’s late wife.

But in August, Soledad’s body was discovered among 24 bodies inside a hidden room at the Pueblo funeral home. The infant’s body was never cremated. Investigators found her body in a small white box, wrapped with green ribbon, inscribed with her name.

John Cordova on Thursday sued the Cotter brothers, Davis Mortuary and the Pueblo Masonic Temple Annex Association, which owns the building at 128 Broadway Ave., where the brothers have long leased space for the mortuary.

Cordova was joined in the lawsuit by family members of two other people — Melvin Emerson and Carl Walker — whose bodies were discovered in the hidden room earlier this year.

The complaint for the first time publicly identifies some of the 24 bodies that state regulators discovered Aug. 20. The regulators found the bodies during the state’s first inspection of the funeral home under a aimed at bringing more oversight to the industry after a string of recent scandals.

Authorities found the two dozen bodies as well as containers filled with bones and tissue behind a hidden door in the mortuary. The has identified just six bodies so far, and has not publicly named the victims.

The complaint details Brian Cotter’s standing in the Pueblo community — he served as the county’s elected coroner from 2014 until his resignation in August, shortly after the bodies were discovered. He also was a leader within the Pueblo Masonic Temple Lodge 17, which operated in the same building as the mortuary, the lawsuit alleges.

Brian Cotter served as the Colorado State Grandmaster of Masons between at least 2009 and 2010, a position also known as the Worshipful Master, the lawsuit claims. The complaint also notes that green — the color of the ribbon on the box holding Soledad Cordova’s remains — symbolizes the “immortality of the soul” within Freemason teachings.

A message left with the Pueblo Masonic Temple Annex Association for comment was not returned. Richard Orona, an attorney for the families, said he included the Masonic association in the lawsuit because they regularly met in the second and third floors of the building above the mortuary, and as landlords for the mortuary had a responsibility to keep tabs on the space below.

“You have 24 decomposing bodies at the same time in the same room — that smell has got to be overwhelming when you walk into that building,” he said. “…The defendants were in and out of that building every day. …And the fact that nothing was done is very troublesome to the families.”

Brian Cotter’s good reputation in the community was part of the reason Patricia Emerson chose Davis Mortuary for her husband Melvin’s funeral arrangements. She was familiar with the funeral home through her work at a Pueblo hospital.

She paid the mortuary $3,000 on top of the bills paid by Medicaid for her husband’s arrangements, the lawsuit claims. She asked to see his body after it was transported to the funeral home, but Brian Cotter refused to allow her to do so, the lawsuit states.

“Through his words and tears, Defendant Brian Cotter made personal guarantees to the Emerson family that Mr. Melvin Emerson’s remains would be handled with the utmost care,” the lawsuit reads.

The family believed the urn they received from the facility contained Melvin Emerson’s remains until they were notified in September that his body had been found among the others in the hidden room.

Neither Brian nor Chris Cotter has been arrested or charged with any crimes, which Orona said is his clients’ number one frustration.

“That is what is pressing on their emotions: the fact they have not been arrested, no one has been held accountable,” Orona said. “Every day that goes by is lost justice for them. They’re anxious to get the lawsuit going, and to start holding these people accountable.”

Authorities have said the investigation remains underway and the effort to identify the remains through DNA analysis is likely to take months.

The discovery of the bodies at Davis Mortuary is one of several scandals of late in Colorado’s funeral industry.

A Jefferson County funeral home director was sentenced to 18 months in prison this year after he was accused of leaving a woman’s corpse in the back of a hearse in Denver for more than a year and improperly storing the cremated remains of at least 30 people at his home.

Investigators also found nearly 200 decomposing bodies piled inside the Return to Nature Funeral Home in the southern Colorado town of Penrose in 2023. That same year, a mother-daughter duo who operated the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose were sentenced to 15 and 20 years in federal prison for selling the body parts of more than 500 deceased clients.

Those scandals to require regular state inspections of funeral homes beginning in 2024.

Colorado Bureau of Investigation and coroner’s officials have identified six of the two dozen bodies found at Davis Mortuary on Aug. 20, when staff from the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies arrived to inspect the facility for the first time under a new law passed by state legislators.

Cotter, who owns Davis Mortuary with his brother, resigned just over a week after state officials found the bodies and multiple containers of human remains at the funeral home.

He has not relinquished his license to operate a funeral home and the process to revoke that license is in the works, CBI Assistant Director of Investigations Clint Thomason said during a Wednesday morning news conference.

Investigators now believe most of the bodies found at Davis Mortuary belong to people who died between 2010 and 2012, Thomason said.

Fremont County Coroner Randy Keller, who is leading the identification effort, has exhausted all means other than DNA to identify the bodies, including fingerprints and dental records, Thomason said.

The lengthy process of DNA identification is one of the reasons the investigation is expected to continue for months, he added.

“We want to file all of the charges that we can at one time,” Thomason said. “That’s going to be the best way to handle this case and to deliver the justice that needs to be done.”

Pueblo County District Attorney Kala Beauvais on Wednesday repeated that she would not consider charges in the case until the CBI’s investigation is complete, which includes identifying all of the bodies.

It’s possible some of the remains will not be identified, but Beauvais said her office will “cross that bridge” if and when that happens.

“I know the community is outraged and feels betrayed, and despite wanting swift justice, the legal process is slow,” she said. “Because my office is dedicated to true justice, I’m determined to get this case right. The filing of charges will be done correctly the first time.”

Thomason said investigators do not yet have an answer for how many people’s remains were contained in the jars of bones and tissue recovered from the mortuary.

Cotter and his brother, Chris, have still not been questioned in the case because they have retained lawyers, Thomason said. They are not considered a flight risk, he said.

The brothers purchased Davis Mortuary in 1989. Brian Cotter was first elected as coroner in 2014 and retained his position until he resigned.

Brian Cotter initially told inspectors that the bodies stashed behind a hidden door were awaiting cremation, but later said some had been in the room for up to 15 years, predating his time as Pueblo County’s elected coroner.

He also admitted he may have given fake cremains to grieving families, police said.

The investigation at Davis Mortuary is one of several that put a national spotlight on lax regulations in Colorado’s funeral home industry in recent years.

Miles Andrew Harford, the funeral director of the now-defunct Apollo Funeral & Cremation Services in Jefferson County, took a deal and pleaded guilty to corpse abuse in April. Harford was accused of leaving a woman’s corpse in the back of a hearse in Denver for more than a year and improperly storing the cremated remains of at least 30 people in his home.

He was sentenced in June to 18 months in prison, court records show.

Investigators also found nearly 200 decomposing bodies piled up inside the Return to Nature Funeral Home in the southern Colorado town of Penrose in 2023.

Jon Hallford withdrew his guilty plea in September, after the judge rejected a plea agreement he struck with prosecutors, and is awaiting trial. His wife, Carie, previously pleaded guilty in the case and is awaiting sentencing.

In January 2023, a mother-daughter duo who operated the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose were sentenced to 15 and 20 years in federal prison for selling the body parts of more than 500 deceased clients.

Megan Hess and her mother, Shirley Koch, dismembered bodies with power saws and sold the parts nationally and internationally from 2009 to 2018. The pair then provided families with fake cremains to cover for the missing body parts.

Investigators unspooled a macabre, nearly decade-long scheme by Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors owner, Megan Hess, and her mother, Shirley Koch, to sell hundreds of bodies and body parts without the consent or knowledge of grieving families.

The pair admitted to meeting with families under the auspices of performing cremations. Instead, they harvested body parts, even entire bodies, to sell through their other business, Donor Services.

They did this for eight years, handing mothers and children, nephews and best friends containers of cremated human remains — cremains — that didn’t contain their loved ones’ ashes. All the while, they were cashing in on the donated dead.

Hess and Koch each pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud and will spend 20 and 15 years in prison, respectively.

The federal investigation shone a light on the and Colorado’s lax funeral home regulations. The morbid spectacle spawned , and multiple changes to state law.

Now the case is finally nearing closure after a federal judge in April re-sentenced the mother and daughter. But because they never went to trial, the public did not get to hear from a host of relevant parties or see much of the evidence that the government would have presented in court.

The FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office have denied records requests from The Denver Post and other news agencies, saying the only information available would come from documents already filed in the case.

A recent Denver Post review of the case file included a trove of unpublished accounts from former Sunset Mesa employees, who described the bizarre, unethical and illegal practices of the notorious funeral home.

The Post also interviewed another former employee whose story was not included in court records. Together, they provide one of the most comprehensive accounts to date of the people who worked for Hess and Koch.

In addition, the case file includes emails between Hess and body broker customers, detailing the back-and-forth as the funeral director marketed stolen bodies.

Here are those stories:

JoAnn Cocozza — Shirley Koch’s assistant

Investigators interviewed JoAnn Cocozza on Jan. 16, 2018, just a few weeks before the .

She recalled a 2013 incident, when Hess and Koch told her that a family was coming in to pick up cremains.

The only problem?

The ashes were labeled with a name that Cocozza recognized as being a body in the cooler awaiting processing. Sure enough, the body was still there.

Cocozza told the FBI that she gave the family cremains — as instructed.

The funeral home operators kept a large bag of cremated remains in the back of the building that they used to fill up small keepsake containers for grieving family members, Cocozza said. Hess and Koch told families that these were the ashes of their loved ones.

They did this over and over again across a long period of time, the assistant said, always using the same bag of cremains.

She recounted a specific instance when the bloodwork on a body that had already been sold came back showing it had been infected with hepatitis. Cocozza expressed concern that she or others could have contracted the disease from handling the body.

“Don’t worry about it,” Koch allegedly told Cocozza, according to court documents. “Just do your job; you won’t get it.”

Koch and Hess did not tell anyone about the hepatitis finding, Cocozza told investigators.

She said Koch mentioned they were making money off gold teeth extracted from bodies. Koch bragged that they made $40,000 by selling the gold, using the money to take a trip to Disneyland.

“I get to cash these in and keep the money,” Koch once said, according to Cocozza’s interview.

Koch and Hess pushed families hard to donate their loved ones’ bodies, she said, even if people said they weren’t interested.

“It’s hard, but don’t worry, their body is just a shell,” Koch allegedly said. She and Hess insisted that the donated bodies helped cure diseases and progress science. They never told families that the bodies were sold for a profit, Cocozza told authorities.

Body brokers — also known as non-transplant tissue banks — are different from the organ and tissue transplant industry, which the U.S. government heavily regulates. No federal law, however, governs the sale of cadavers or body parts for use in research or education.

In 2017, Koch gave Cocozza a silver vial that she said contained the ashes of Cocozza’s husband. Cocozza, however, told investigators she already believed the funeral home had given her his ashes years earlier.

Hess and Koch sometimes asked her to bring forms to the Montrose County offices to get death certificates. She knew, though, that the bodies had already been processed and shipped off, she told investigators.

“If they ask, make sure you say they are still at the funeral home,” Hess and Koch said, according to Cocozza’s interview.

Cocozza could not be reached for comment.

Amanda Rackay — Megan Hess’s secretary

Amanda Rackay gave testimony to authorities on Oct. 20, 2017.

After interviewing for the job at Sunset Mesa, Rackay recalled Hess saying, “I’m paying taxes, don’t worry. It’s all legal.”

Rackay’s duties included inputting information into an electronic death registration system. Hess told her to enter all dispositions as “burial” or “cremation.” The secretary later realized, she said, that there was also an option for “donation” in the system.

She asked Hess if she should use that designation for bodies donated through Donor Services, the body-broker business that Hess and Koch ran in addition to the funeral home.

“You don’t need to worry about that,” Hess allegedly told Rackay. “Let’s (label) them all as cremation.”

Rackay told investigators that she overheard Hess tell Koch that she was sick of the state tracking the body donations.

Rackay could not be reached for comment on her testimony.

Sharla Downing — Megan Hess’s public relations representative

Sharla Downing gave an interview to authorities on July 15, 2018.

Hess directed Downing to conduct a publicity campaign targeting the largest nursing homes in Montrose. The goal: have staff make positive remarks about Hess and Sunset Mesa so residents and their families would turn to the funeral home for business.

Downing said Hess provided her with fliers with the slogan, “Our family taking care of your family.”

The funeral home director had Downing give presentations about Sunset Mesa and Donor Services. She told Downing to stay vague when describing donations, using the term “tissue” to encompass anything from skin to knees to elbow joints.

Hess never spoke about selling whole body parts unless it was a whole body donation, Downing told authorities. In those cases, the body would be going to a specific research university, which would then send back cremains. Hess said she had connections with multiple universities, including Harvard, Downing said.

Hess made grandiose statements about how these donations helped people, Downing said — statements authorities later said were not true. Bodies from Sunset Mesa went to scientific and research companies; they were not used for transplants.

But the funeral director told people a spine donated to a disabled veteran in Florida helped the person walk again, Hess told investigators. Donated eyes helped the blind see, Hess claimed.

Older adults in these presentations asked how their bodies could be used for donations. Hess instructed Downing to tell them that the skin of an elderly person was better for skin grafting because it was already stretched out.

“Hess would pull on her arm skin as she described this,” Downing told investigators.

Audiences also asked whether Hess, Sunset Mesa or Donor Services received any financial benefit from the donated bodies. Downing said Hess initially replied that she only took a small shipping fee and “does it all for the good of the community.” Another time, Hess said the business may take a small recovery fee.

In reality, prosecutors later said, Hess made substantial money from these body donations by selling them.

Downing could not be reached for comment on her testimony.

Scott Beilfuss — Sunset Mesa contractor

In 2016 and 2017, Scott Beilfuss worked for a third-party marketing company that contracted with Sunset Mesa. His job involved meeting with prospective clients and discussing their future funeral needs.

In between those meetings, Beilfuss hung out for hours at Sunset Mesa with Hess and Koch.

“I always said I would write a musical about Sunset Mesa,” he said in an interview, chuckling. “It would be like the ‘Sweeney Todd’ or ‘Little Shop of Horrors.’ It was so crazy.”

Koch spent much of the day in the back of the funeral home, dismembering bodies, Beilfuss said. She learned the craft from YouTube.

Beilfuss said he sat in the funeral home’s planning room and Koch popped in, asking if he’d like to see her work. He always declined the invitation.

“I was a paper person, not a body person,” Beilfuss said.

Hess, though, was the “driver and the mastermind of the whole thing,” he said.

The two made presentations to older folks together, trying to drum up business. Hess was good at it, Beilfuss said. She was creative, ambitious and competitive — always looking for a way to scale up their business.

“Megan always used to say, ‘We’re cremating miracles,’ ” he said. “That was their tagline.”

At the beginning, it seemed to Beilfuss like Hess had good motives. As it went on, he said, it became more about money.

“It transitioned from serving the public to building up some income to show that she was successful,” Beilfuss said. “She wanted to be viewed as a successful business person.”

Now a Grand Junction City Council member, Beilfuss said he feels Koch had no nefarious intentions. She was just doing her job.

Hess, on the other hand?

“I don’t know she believed she was doing anything wrong,” he said.

‘Get ready!!!!!!’

The court documents also included emails showing how Hess negotiated and sold donated body parts to prospective buyers.

In one email from September 2013, Hess said she could deliver a “very nice, younger muscled donor” for $1,500. The body would be embalmed and delivered to an unspecified buyer in Fort Collins.

“I wish to be your partner in donation, so if there are orders such as matching whole legs (which I have pairs on-hand), whole hearts, torsos or other tissue that you are looking for, please let me know,” Hess wrote. “I can adjust pricing accordingly to meet your needs. If I have a donor you are interested in but need different pricing to make it work for your end, let me know.”

In 2014, Hess sent the same customer an email with the subject “female torso pics.”

“I’m sorry that I haven’t sent photos,” the funeral director wrote. “I have had terrible donors for your process. Meeting with hospice on the 4th… opening the flood gates of donors. They have 4-5 deaths a day. Get ready!!!!!! I have 3 spines when needed.”

In another email, Hess told a customer she hoped to send them 150 to 200 donors per year, if not more.

A federal judge in Grand Junction in January 2023 sentenced Hess to 20 years in prison and Koch to 15 years, but the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the sentences last year after ruling that the judge erred in several ways in calculating their punishment.

The same judge, Christine M. Arguello, on Monday stuck with her original sentences, giving Hess 20 years and Koch 15 years, following a lengthy resentencing hearing.

“Hess has shown no remorse and continues to justify her heinous conduct,” Arguello said, calling the scheme a “horrendous crime.”

Families who used Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors in Montrose to cremate their loved ones believed their long odyssey to finally be over after the 2023 sentencing.

But the three-panel appeals court ruled Arguello erred in calculating monetary loss by refusing to offset the value of goods and services that the next of kin received at the time of the fraud. The court also erred by finding that body-part purchasers suffered financial loss through their dealings with Sunset Mesa, the 10th Circuit ruled.

Monday’s hearing likely marks the final chapter in a case that began when the FBI raided the funeral home in February 2018, following a that found Sunset Mesa to be unlike any other business in the country. The gruesome details of the case — which authorities say included more than 500 victims — drew international attention and shined a light on the American body broker industry.

During an investigation dubbed “Operation Morbid Market,” federal agents ultimately tracked hundreds of bodies and body parts sold by Hess and Koch to places as far away as Saudi Arabia.

“The defendants’ conduct was horrific and morbid and driven by greed,” then-U.S. Attorney Cole Finegan said in a 2023 statement after the first sentencing. “They took advantage of numerous victims who were at their lowest point, given the recent loss of a loved one.”

Hess and Koch each pleaded guilty in 2023 to one count of mail fraud. Investigators determined the pair stole the bodies or body parts of at least 222 victims, with another 338 “almost certainly stolen,” according to Hess’ plea agreement. The pair also shipped bodies and body parts that tested positive for infectious diseases, according to their plea agreements.

Koch told federal investigators that Hess was the brains behind the operation and she provided the labor.

The Sunset Mesa case, along with subsequent ghastly funeral home revelations, prompted Colorado lawmakers to close loopholes in state statutes surrounding the regulation of the industry.

A three-judge panel on the Denver-based court ruled the federal district court erred when it sentenced Megan Hess and Shirley Koch to 20 and 15 years in prison, respectively, for the eight-year scheme to defraud families.

In January 2023, U.S. District Judge Christine M. Arguello sentenced the mother-daughter pair to longer terms than allowed by the advisory guidelines outlined in their plea agreements, saying the scope of this “heinous offense” put her in “uncharted waters.” The judges did not say what length of sentence would have been appropriate.

The appeals court judges, in their July 2 , ruled Arguello erred in calculating monetary loss by refusing to offset the value of goods and services that the next of kin received at the time of the fraud. The court also erred by finding that body-part purchasers suffered financial loss through their dealings with Sunset Mesa, the 10th Circuit ruled.

“The district court����ap legal analysis is faulty,” the judges wrote.

The appeals court’s decision also found the district court erred when it added sentence enhancers for a large number of vulnerable victims. The deceased individuals cannot be counted in this class, the court ruled, while grieving families do not fit the criteria.

Additionally, the district court erred on sentence enhancers for Koch based on crimes committed through “sophisticated means,” the justices wrote.

“That Hess could not have perpetrated her overall scheme (which included Hess’ sophisticated means) without Koch’s assistance does not mean that Koch caused the sophisticated conduct to occur,” the decision stated.

The case will now be remanded to the district court for resentencing. Court records indicate a new date has not yet been set.

The Sunset Mesa case became an international story in 2018 when found the Montrose facility to be the only business in the country that combined a funeral home with a crematorium and body broker company.

In February of that year, the FBI the funeral home. During an investigation dubbed “Operation Morbid Market,” federal agents ultimately tracked hundreds of bodies and body parts sold by Hess and Koch to places as far away as Saudi Arabia.

Hess and Koch each pleaded guilty last year to one count of mail fraud. Investigators determined the pair stole the bodies or body parts of at least 222 victims, with another 338 “almost certainly stolen,” according to Hess’ plea agreement.

Koch told federal investigators that Hess was the brains behind the operation and she provided the labor.

The Sunset Mesa case, along with subsequent ghastly funeral home revelations, prompted Colorado lawmakers to close loopholes in state statutes surrounding the regulation of the industry.

Re: “Colorado finally will license funeral home directors,” May 25 news story

Rep. Matt Soper would have been correct if he’d referred only to the Return to Nature and Sunset Mesa funeral homes as a “dark, dark world.” His mistake was in painting the entire death-care industry with that broad brush.

I have been in the business for more than 15 years at Colorado’s oldest family-owned funeral home. It is a place of light and love, committed to dignity and compassion for the dead and to helping grieving loved ones find a path to walk.

The vast majority of people in my industry are dedicated to these ideals and operate as my co-workers and I do: with true care and empathy both for the dead and for their survivors. The appalling actions taken by the few bad actors who made the news for all the wrong reasons in the past few years should not reflect on the rest of us.

In fact, many of us have been concerned by Colorado’s lack of oversight compared to other states and looked forward to seeing a carefully crafted regulatory program that treats good operators fairly while protecting clients from harm.

It����ap easy to make broad, general statements. But people, especially our elected officials, should take care not to group the good in with the bad.

Jamie Sarché, Denver

Editor’s note: Sarché is director of pre-planning at Feldman Mortuary in Denver.

Work to keep children with parents

Re: “Keep kids out of foster care by supporting parents,” May 25 commentary

Shari F. Shink’s article is eye-opening and very thoughtfully worded. It presents evidence that an ounce of prevention creates a pound of cure. What most fail to see is that the rewards from this are not only for the individual children and families but for society as a whole. Remember the “family values” movement? This is what that should have been about. Helping families survive and thrive.

I’m reminded of a dear childhood friend back in the 1960s whose family of five children was scattered to various foster homes when their father died suddenly, and their mom couldn’t provide for them. She spent two years without her family and siblings while her mom got back on her feet. In the end, the sisters were able to reunite with her, but the three younger brothers were not. I’ve often wondered what happened to them all. Shink’s article makes me wonder if receiving aid would have kept them all together.

In election years, we often hear cries about spending, with one group yelling, “Don’t spend any more of my money.” Shink demonstrates that there are those who need assistance to get out of the hole so all can benefit the greater society.

Krista Igoe, Littleton

Electoral College necessary for fair representation

Re: “Our presidents should be popularly elected,” May 22 letter to the editor

The idea of electing presidents by popular vote means that Colorado and the other less populated states will never see candidates appear in their state. They will concentrate their time and policies on the more populated states as the concerns of the smaller states will not be addressed.

Our nation would not have come together had our Founding Fathers not agreed to the Electoral College. The smaller states knew that if the president was elected by popular vote, whoever won the largest cities in the most populous states would win every election, leaving the smaller states with no say in presidential elections. The same remains true today.

Our Democrat-controlled legislature passed the popular vote measure simply as sour grapes since Hilary Clinton did not win. Had she won the Electoral College and lost the popular vote, the issue would never have been brought before the legislature.

I am not and have never been a supporter of former President Donald Trump or his policies. I am a supporter of Colorado and other smaller states having some say in presidential elections. I don’t want California, Texas, Florida and New York controlling our elections. Before advocating for a popular vote, please learn why our Founding Fathers did not adopt that procedure.

Wayne Patton, Salida

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In a sent to the state legislature last week, the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies said, “It is clear that the public is harmed by the general lack of regulation of funeral service professionals in Colorado.”

Colorado has long boasted the laxest mortuary regulations in the nation. The state is the only one in the country to license funeral home businesses, not those running them.

Under a recommendation proposed by the Colorado Funeral Directors Association, new funeral home and crematory workers would need to graduate from an accredited mortuary sciences school, pass a national exam, serve a one-year apprenticeship and pass a background check.

The industry group requested current workers be grandfathered in, only mandating they submit an application and fee to the state and pass a background check.

“People in other states don’t take Colorado seriously because we don’t have a license,” said Joe Walsh, president of the Colorado Funeral Directors Association, in an interview. “I don’t agree with that, but I can understand why people would say that.”

State regulators, in the report, asked stakeholders to list examples of the harm done to the public by lack of regulation — and they had no shortage of cases.

These grievous accounts included multiple discoveries that made international headlines in recent years. The owners of the Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors in Montrose, Shirley Koch and Megan Hess, were sentenced last year to 15 and 20 years in prison, respectively, for harvesting and selling body parts around the globe without the consent of grieving families.

In November, authorities arrested the owners of a Fremont County funeral home after the grisly discovery of 189 decomposing bodies. Families told reporters that they received certificates of cremation from businesses that they later learned were false. Law enforcement is now sorting through the rubble, working to determine decedent identities.

Without regulation, the state wrote in the report, these mortuary operators could re-enter Colorado’s funeral industry upon their release from prison (the state does not currently conduct background checks for those operating or owning funeral homes).

The report listed a host of other harmful activities that could be prevented with additional oversight: improper record-keeping, decedents being physically mistreated, improper storage of bodies and dirty facilities.

“In short, these are allegations of a general lack of respect and dignity for the deceased and are not the types of things that family members would necessarily know about,” state regulators wrote.

The report is not a bill or law — it is merely a recommendation from oversight officials for consideration by lawmakers.

But the review has the backing of Walsh’s organization and its members. And there’s interest from the legislature to reform an industry that has long lagged behind other states.

In October, regulators recommended the state conduct routine inspections of funeral homes and crematories. Until last year, if officials wanted to inspect a funeral home or crematory, the business had to grant permission. The state acknowledged it does not conduct proactive, routine checks.

State Sen. Dylan Roberts, an Avon Democrat, told The Post in October that he’s working on a bill that would mandate these types of inspections, along with some type of licensure for funeral home workers. He admitted the state also needs to devote more resources to the regulation of the industry, which sports an annual budget of less than $75,000 and is staffed with less than one full-time employee.

“I do not see any pitfalls unless you are a bad actor,” Walsh said. “Then, yeah, you shouldn’t be in the industry.”

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Jesse Elliot knew his mother wanted a green burial after her death.

A Buddhist and environmentalist, Yong Anderson, who died in June at 76, requested her ashes be spread on the Hawaiian island of O‘ahu, where she lived for many years.

So Elliot turned to the , a Colorado Springs-based facility specializing in natural burial services.

He immediately had suspicions. The owners, Jon and Carie Hallford, would never let him stop by the funeral home, Elliot said. When they dropped off his mother’s ashes, the former service member said they felt far too heavy to be his 92-pound mom.

Anderson’s death certificate said Return to Nature had used Wilbert Funeral Services for the cremation. But on Friday, after authorities found at least 115 improperly stored bodies at the funeral home’s Penrose location, Elliot wanted to check on this arrangement.

“I’m sorry, we did not handle your mother’s remains,” Elliot said a Wilbert employee told him.

Elliot’s story raises questions about how many other families who turned to Return to Nature during times of grief received the services they were promised.

The FBI and local law enforcement last week announced parallel investigations to determine whether criminal charges are warranted as authorities work to identify the bodies. No arrests have been made.

The Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies, which oversees the state’s funeral homes and crematories, last week suspended the funeral home’s Colorado Springs license. The Penrose location, state regulators found, had been operating since November without a license.

The magnitude of the investigation prompted the state to activate the to assist with hazardous materials, food and security for workers, and personal protective equipment.

The gruesome details emerging from Penrose have exposed Colorado’s loose regulatory framework around the mortuary industry, which regulates businesses, not people. More stringent laws could be coming this legislative session.

The Hallfords have not responded to requests for comment since authorities raided their business.

“Those don’t look like human remains”

Elliot, of Woodland Park, said the couple grew defensive when he and his family started questioning his mother’s cremation process.

When Carie Hallford dropped off the box with her supposed cremains, “she had this huge smile,” Elliot said.

“Of course this is your mother,” he said Carie told him.

But the envelope and box Elliot received contained no metal tags, normally used to track the deceased through cremation. Also missing: a certificate for cremation.

Despite these reservations, the grieving family flew in August to scatter Anderson’s remains around Diamond Head, the famous volcanic cone outside Honolulu.

Elliot’s brother-in-law, who also served in the military, quietly leaned over as they sprinkled the ashes.

“Jesse,” he said. “Those don’t look like human remains.”

Elliot’s heart dropped.

His sister took some of the remains to a funeral home in Georgia, he said. Without doing a forensic test, the operator said the cremains were more than likely not human.

A lawyer for Wilbert Funeral Services, the crematory listed on Anderson’s death certificate, told The Denver Post on Tuesday that the company stopped working with Return to Nature in November — seven months before Anderson’s death.

“We did not perform any cremations for them after that,” said Lisa Epps, the company’s general counsel.

In March, Wilbert sued Return to Nature and its owners, saying they owed more than $18,000, court records show. An El Paso County judge in June entered a judgment against the couple for the sum plus interest.

Law enforcement told Elliot to hold onto the ashes as the investigation continues.

“I want my mother’s remains back,” he said, “so we can do this all over again to put her to rest.”

Closing regulatory loopholes

The Return to Nature case comes amid a slow revamping of Colorado’s regulatory framework for funeral homes and crematories.

A 2018 investigation by The Post found the state’s oversight of these businesses to be among the laxest in the nation.

Colorado is the only state that does not license funeral workers. Instead, the state regulates the businesses themselves.

The Department of Regulatory Agencies last week Return to Nature’s Colorado Springs license and issued a to its Penrose location for operating without a license. Neither business was licensed to perform cremations.

But Colorado law allows Return to Nature’s owners to open another funeral home if they wish, pending any criminal investigation or separate state action. And state regulators have no authority to inspect an unlicensed business without law enforcement’s involvement.

State lawmakers have taken some steps in recent years to close loopholes in the statute.

The licensing structure for funeral homes and crematories began in 2019, following the grisly Sunset Mesa case in Montrose. The owners of that company were arrested and charged by the U.S. Department of Justice with illegally selling body parts around the world without families’ consent.

The operators, Megan Hess and Shirley Koch, were sentenced in January to 20 and 15 years in federal prison, respectively, for their roles in the scheme.

In the aftermath of the FBI’s raid on that Western Slope funeral home, legislators passed a bill outlawing the simultaneous ownership of funeral homes, crematories and body broker businesses.

The governor in 2020 signed a bill making abuse of a corpse a felony offense.

Last session, lawmakers passed , which allows the Department of Regulatory Agencies to inspect licensed funeral homes and crematories if the agency receives a complaint about the business. The law came in response to charges levied against the Lake County coroner, who in February received for unlawful cremation.

Before the law, the department had no authority to inspect these businesses without the consent of an owner.

And with that sound, dozens of victims let out gasps — hugging, crying and laughing at the conclusion Tuesday of a real-life body-snatching case that the judge acknowledged had little precedent in American history.

“We came today to hear the handcuffs click,” said Erin Smith, who brought her mother’s body to Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors in Montrose after her death in 2011. Seven years later, the FBI informed her family that her mother wasn’t cremated but instead dismembered and sold for profit. “And we got that.”

U.S. District Judge Christine M. Arguello on Tuesday sentenced Hess, 46, to 20 years in prison — the maximum allowable — for her role in a nearly decade-long scheme to sell body parts without the consent of grieving Western Slope families. Her mother, Koch, 69, received a 15-year sentence.

The emotional, daylong hearing brought to a close a five-year legal odyssey that began when the FBI raided the funeral home in February 2018, following a  that found Sunset Mesa to be unlike any other business in the country. The gruesome details of the case — which authorities say included more than 500 victims — drew international attention and shined a light on the  American body broker industry.

Arguello, who at one point Tuesday shared personal anecdotes of her own grief after losing her husband of 45 years, eschewed advisory guidelines for both defendants, saying the scope of this “heinous offense” put her in “uncharted waters.”

“This case falls outside the heartland of any other cases in the United States,” the judge said, calling it the most emotionally draining case she’s handled during her time on the bench.

The FBI, during an investigation dubbed “Operation Morbid Market,” ultimately tracked hundreds of bodies and body parts sold by Hess and Koch to places as far away as Saudi Arabia. Over the course of several years, dozens of Coloradans who used Sunset Mesa were horrified to learn from federal agents that the urns in their homes didn’t contain their loved ones’ ashes.

“While technically not a violent crime, this is a heinous crime, a dastardly crime,” said Tim Neff, an assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case.

“A silent scream of gratitude”

Dozens of those families detailed their unfathomable anguish Tuesday before the court. Nightmares. Post-traumatic stress disorder. Loss of trust. An unending cycle of grief and anger.

“When Megan stole my mom’s heart,” Nancy Overhoff said, “she broke mine.”

A federal grand jury in March 2020 Hess and Koch, charging each with six counts of mail fraud and three counts of illegal transportation of hazardous materials.

Hess sat with slumped shoulders, looking at the ground through much of Tuesday’s proceedings. She wiped her eyes as she approached the podium. When Arguello asked if she had anything to say, Hess slowly shook her head.

Koch, before receiving her sentence, apologized to the grieving families, saying her only motivation was medical research.

“I acknowledge my guilt and take responsibility for my actions,” she said. “I’m very sorry for the harm I caused you and your families.”

The victims, however, universally pleaded with the judge to impose the maximum allowable sentence.

Danielle McCarthy lost her husband, David, on Father’s Day in 2017. Several months after the FBI’s raid at Sunset Mesa, an agent called to tell her David’s cremains were not in the box she had been given. He had been sold and shipped to Detroit — in pieces.

When the judge announced Hess’ sentence Tuesday, McCarthy covered her mouth and sobbed.

“It was truly a silent scream of gratitude,” she said outside the courthouse, hugging people she met through their shared grief.

Hess and Koch each earlier this year to one count of mail fraud. Investigators determined the pair stole the bodies or body parts of at least 222 victims, with another 338 “almost certainly stolen,” according to Hess’ plea agreement.

The mother and daughter sold these bodies without consent — and in some cases forged documentation in order to sell bodies with infectious diseases such as HIV and hepatitis, the government found.

FBI agent John Busch testified during Tuesday’s hearing that Hess ripped off logos and slogans from an organ and tissue company — Denver-based Donor Alliance Inc. — to falsely market to families that they could donate organs to help the blind see or the immobile walk through a new spine.

In reality, Sunset Mesa could not legally offer these services.

Koch, in two interviews with law enforcement in February 2018, told federal investigators that Hess was the “brains” behind the operation, that the funeral home did not keep proper records and that cremated remains were mixed together because it was “‘too hard’ to keep things separate,” Hess’ attorney wrote in a March court filing.

“She was the business part of it,” Koch told an FBI agent, according to an interview transcript included in Koch’s response to Hess’ motion. “I was really the labor part of it.”

Hess and Koch have also been named in seven lawsuits brought by families who said they were deceived and defrauded. Judgments in those cases have totaled millions of dollars.

“Tarred and feathered by the local community”

The Sunset Mesa case exposed Colorado’s lax oversight over funeral homes and crematoriums, prompting state lawmakers to enact several changes, including harshening penalties for tempering with dead bodies, beefing up regulators’ ability to inspect mortuaries and making it illegal to simultaneously operate a funeral home and body broker business.

State Rep. Matt Soper, a Montrose Republican, watched Tuesday’s hearing from the back of the courtroom. He spearheaded the legislation aimed at closing loopholes in Colorado’s funeral home oversight statutes.

“My faith in our judiciary has been restored,” Soper said after the sentencing.

Hess and Koch’s attorneys argued in pre-sentencing statements to the judge that their clients’ motives weren’t entirely bad: They believed strongly that “without donation (of bodies or body parts) there is no cure,” Koch’s attorney wrote. Hess’ lawyers said the Sunset Mesa funeral director didn’t get rich from this scheme; she drives a 16-year-old car and is deep in debt.

“Ms. Hess has been figuratively tarred and feathered by the local community as much as one can in the 21st century,” her attorney wrote in the filing, urging the judge to consider a lighter sentence.

Hess, in a 2016 interview with Reuters, said she viewed the body parts operation as a public service, helping research and medical education.

“It����ap for the good of the world,” she told the news outlet, “and I like to help people.”

The 2018 Reuters investigation found Sunset Mesa operated unlike any other business in the country. The news agency could find no other examples of a body broker business operating under the same roof as a funeral home and crematory.

A former employee, cited in the Reuters story, said Koch extracted gold teeth from the deceased in order to pay for a Disneyland vacation.

It’s not illegal in the United States to sell body parts for research and education, though the industry is not federally regulated. Few states oversee the business and almost anyone — with or without experience — can dissect and sell human body parts.

Tuesday’s hearing marked the end of the Sunset Mesa legal case. But for many victims, the pain doesn’t end now that Koch and Hess are headed to federal prison.

“This is something a person never really heals from,” said Chrissy Hartman. “It becomes our new normal.”