Washington [US], January 4: The owner of a funeral home in Colorado (USA) has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for lying to relatives of the dead by secretly dissecting up to 560 bodies and selling parts.
In July, defendant Megan Hess, 46, pleaded guilty to operating the Sunset Mesa funeral home and the Donor Services organization, which specializes in providing human organs.
A prison term of 20 years is the maximum sentence. The defendant's mother, Shirley Koch, 69, also pleaded guilty to fraud and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. According to court documents, the mother's main role was to dissect the body.
"Defendants Hess and Koch used their funeral home to steal bodies and organs. Their behavior has caused immense emotional pain to the families and loved ones of the victims," ​​prosecutor Tim Neff said.
The authorities involved came in after a series of Reuters investigative reports from 2016-2018 into the sale of human organs in the US. Several former employees confirmed that Ms. Hess and Koch conducted illegal dissection. Weeks after Reuters published an article in 2018, the FBI ransacked the facility.
"Vampire"
Prosecutors emphasized the "grisly nature" of Hess' crime and described it as one of the largest cases in US history involving human organs.
The defense argued that Defendant Hess was unfairly defamed when he was criticized as a "witch", "monster" and "vampire", while his client was just "a broken person". and behavior possibly due to traumatic brain injury at age 18.
At the trial on January 3, defendant Hess refused to answer the judge. Defendant Koch apologized and accepted responsibility for his actions.
Hess's funeral home charges up to $1,000 for each case of cremating the body even if it does not proceed. In addition, the defendant also received free burning for organ donation cases.
Prosecutors said the defendant deceived hundreds of families, who received ashes mixed with the ashes of other bodies.
Twenty-six victims described their horror when they discovered what had happened to their loved one's body. "Our dear mother, they dismembered her body," said Erin Smith, who said the defendants sold her mother's shoulders, knees and legs.
The United States prohibits the sale of organs such as hearts, kidneys and tendons for transplantation that must be donated. The sale of organs such as the head, arms and spine, as defendant Hess did, for educational uses is not regulated by federal law.
According to prosecutors, Defendant Hess deceived the relatives of the deceased by saying that the body was cremated, while secretly dismembering and selling it. Anatomy training companies and others that have purchased hands, feet, heads and upper bodies from Hess testified that they did not know they had been duped.
Source: ThanhNien Newspaper
