Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Funeral Home of Horrors - Megan Hess and Shirley Koch

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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Funeral Home of Horrors - Megan Hess and Shirley Koch · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Bodybags with Joseph Scott Morgan. We're gonna have a discussion
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: about a case that is so horrific. And it's not
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: just a case, it's several cases that just the mere
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: thought of will certainly give you pause when you begin
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: to think about what's going to happen to me when
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: I die. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybags.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: I am so pleased to welcome back to body Bags
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: my buddy, Dave Mac, investigative reporter with Crime Online. What
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: a day for you to come back. The cases we're
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: going to be discussing today, it would make stronger men,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: certainly faint, I would think, and certainly something you probably
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: didn't think about when you got the call from me. Joe,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: it's great to be back. I really appreciate the opportunity
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: to be here with you. First of all, every time
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: around you, I learned something that is totally foreign. You know,
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: something I didn't even know. I didn't no kind of thing.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: But when I found out we were going to be
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: talking about a funeral home, what happens after we passed
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: from this world to whatever one believes is next. And
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: we all have different feelings about that, I've told you before.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: My wife she believes in mausoleum, having that place to
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: go to visit the dead. I am of the mindset
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: it doesn't mean much to me. But if I found
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: out somebody was doing something with my body after I
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: was gone that I didn't say they could do, I
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: would have a problem with that, A big problem, and
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: I think most people do. I think we have an
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: understanding that we live on this earth. We have certain
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: rights that we expect while we're alive, and we have
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: certain beliefs in when we die. Finding out that somebody
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: could do something to a loved one after they are gone,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: that really grinds my gears and something I didn't see coming, Joe.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Most people, you don't give it a second thought most
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: of the time. The word victim gets thrown around a
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: lot nowadays. But can you say victimized the dead? Perhaps?
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: I think in the cases we're going to discuss today,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: you're victimizing family. Let me ask you this, Joe. A
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: person dies, and at that point we know that a
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: body gets picked up and they get taken somewhere, and
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: after all the legal stuff, whether it's an autopsy or whatever,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: that they end up at a funeral home. What is
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: the purpose of a funeral home? Where do we begin
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: in the process of the dead body. Funeral homes have
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: not been something that have been part of the human
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: story forever and ever. You know, if you're into the
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Civil War and history, there are those images of the
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: transportable embalming service that they had during the Civil Wars.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: The first time you actually saw it. Because these battlefields
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: were so distant, people began to get used to having
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: bodies embombed and that just wasn't the case. And the
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: reason was these battlefields were so far away the bodies
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: had to make it back to families to be buried.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: We hear about mummies and all that stuff, but that's
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: elite stuff. For the common everyday person. Funeral homes and
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: that sort of thing, we're kind of a luxury, certainly,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: the preparation of a body, and in order to do that,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: you have to have a facility that is certified, that
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: is bonafid, that falls within the legal parameters of whatever
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: state you're living in, that's going to take care of
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: the remains and take care of them in an appropriate manner.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: When you look at it from a familial standpoint, you're
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: putting a lot of trust into the hands of these
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: people that come to your home. If you have a
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: loved one that passes way at home, and it might
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: be reportable to the corner, but the corner releases. We
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: just call it releasing from the scene from a medical
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: legal perspective. Funeral home will take the body back and
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: then begin to prepare the body according to the families wishes.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: And then you have bodies of individuals that passway. In hospitals,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: it's kind of the same thing. The bodies will be
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: removed from the floor from the emergency room and taken
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: and when I say floor, I mean removed from the
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: med searge floor or wherever they are being treated ICU
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: and be placed in the morgue at the hospital, and
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: then a funeral home will come and remove the body.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: That's actually how I got my start. I was working
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: as a morgue attendent in a hospital. The bodies will
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: be removed from the morgue by the funeral home and
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: taken and be prepped. Either they're going to be buried
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: or they're going to be cremated. There's a third option
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: that many people probably heard of, but they're not completely
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: aware of. And that is an anatomical donation, and that
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: does happen. It happens with some frequency, and each state
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: has an anatomical board. Bodies will be donated by families,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: and they'll be sent to medical schools and they're used
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: for gross anatomy examinations to teach medical students based at
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: human anatomy. Not like reading in a book or dissecting
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: some animal like you did in biology class in high school.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about actually doing a detailed dissection in a
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: gross anatomy lab at a medical school, and many times
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: bodies are donated for those purposes. Hey, when you say
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: gross anatomy, you're not talking like, oh gross, I mean
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: that's an actual medical term. Right. When you hear gross
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: anatomical dissection, you're talking about an overall dissection, as opposed
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: to say, if you're doing a microscopic examination where you're
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: looking at a very specific item. Gross anatomical dissection essentially
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: means that you have a sample or a specimen before
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: you and you begin the dissection at that point in time.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: It happens not only from a teaching perspective, but if
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: someone goes into the hospital and they have a tumor removed,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: or if they have a limb that is amputated, that
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: will be grossly dissected by the pathologist at the hospital
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: to try to understand the disease that this person is
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: suffering from. If I want to donate my body to science,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: I can make that clear, this is what I want,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: right yeah, and they'll do it. But you can't then
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: turn around and say, hey, I know Dave mac had
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: a lot of weird stuff going on with him. When
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: he dies, we're going to take it. You can't just
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: decide I'm going to take this body and not that one, right. No, No,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: you can't. And that's why these decisions are left up
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: to families. I mean, you can pre prepare, and people
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: that decide that they want to make an anatomical gift
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: of their mortal remains can do it, and they do
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: it prior to death, and all of this is set
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: up in advance. And interestingly enough, and I'm not here
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: to advertise for anyone, but I've had several people ask
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: me because I teach forensic science, and specifically in forensic science,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: I teach medical legal death investigation, have people that ask me, Hey,
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: I'd really like to donate my body to the Body
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Farm at the University of Tennessee. Now, if you've done
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: any study in forensics, you know what goes on up there.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: It's the study of essentially decomposing remains. So people will
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: donate their body to be in a natural environment where
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: it will be studied as it begins to break down.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: So there's any number of ways that bodies can be
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: donated and utilized after death. Oddly enough, it was the
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Casey Anthony trial where many of us about the body
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Farm in Tennessee for the very first time because they
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: were able to scientifically utilize the smells, odors and things
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: like that that they were able to use at that
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: trial as they were researching what could have been in
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: the trunk of a car. Fascinating stuff, but still that's
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: something that you or your family has to decide that
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: nobody else gets to make that call. This has to
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: be either you doing this prior to death, or it
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: has to be your family making a decision on your
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: behalf at that point in time according to what they
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: believe your wishes were, because sometimes that does in fact happen.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: For that purpose, you begin to think about if you
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: can donate your whole body is it possible that your
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: body can be piecemealed. Why would your body be piecemealed?
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: That is, parts of your body be taken and donated,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: and in certain circumstances that of course can't happen. And
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: I think that goes to what we're talking about today.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: When I hear the term donation, all kinds of thoughts
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: come to mind. I think about helping people most of
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: the time, but you think about in a medical sense donors,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: people that do donations of their organs, people that donate
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: their eyes for those that can't see. But there is
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: a name that is going to stick with me for
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: a while, and it's the name of a business. It's
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: called Donor Services inside of Colorado, and it was run
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: by a woman named Megan Hess who was involved in
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: a situation where she not only had this donor services business,
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: but hang onto your hats, in the same building also
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: housed the funeral home that her family had owned for years, Dave,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: this is absolutely horrific. A huge tip off is when
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: you have what is referred to as a body broker
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: and a crematorium slash mortuary funeral home in the same building.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: To be straight up with you, it is scary to
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: think that we have a funeral home and hey, on
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: this side, go to the left, we creamate, go to
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: the right, we got your body parts. I would assume
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: these are in separate buildings away from one another, that
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: as a body is being prepared, the family has decided
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: this body has been donated to science, that they would
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: go towards the body donated to science. This one, oh,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: we want to creamate or berry this one goes to
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: the funeral home. That's what I thought before today. I
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: think it probably goes without saying. With cremation it's obviously
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: less expensive. Then if you have a full on burial
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: where you're purchasing the casket and the prep of the body,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: and of course the services that are associated with it,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: opening up either a crypt or creating a grave with
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: a vault and all those sorts of things. Guess one
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: of the reasons they would want to do this, to
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: do a cremation is that it's cost effective. Other people
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: just believe that they would rather see the money that
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: is going to be left behind for their family to
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: go to some other purpose other than some expensive funeral.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: But herein lies the problem. When you have a crematory
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: service like this, that is essentially attached to a business
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: that is titled donor services. You begin to think about, well,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: what are the possibilities here, what's going on. Well, in
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Hesse's case, along with her mother who also co owned
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: these businesses and had for years, what they were doing. Essentially,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: as it came down to it, they were selling cremations
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: to families. All Right, they're saying, I'm going to take
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: care of your loved one. We're going to cremate the remains,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: we will return them to you in some type of vessel,
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: nornate jar of some type, and will be done. But
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: that wasn't the case. It's estimated that hundreds, if not
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: thousands of cases that pass through there for the purposes
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: of cremation. These people were going back into a room
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: and actually dissecting off specific body parts of the deceased
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: and he smealing out the bodies. They would either sell
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: a piece of the bodies, say from knee to foot,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: or from wrist to the tip of the fingers or
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: shoulder to the tip of the fingers. They would dissect
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: these bodies out for the purposes of anatomical study. To
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: what turned out to be not legitimate businesses or legitimate organizations.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: They'd be paid great sums of money, and then the
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: remainder of this they would essentially cremate, or if they
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: had completely piecemealed out the body, just latch onto this.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: If they had completely piecemealed out the body of a
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: family's loved one, they would essentially return an urn sealed
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: to the family containing something other than human remains that
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: had been burned, perhaps sawdust, perhaps would in some cases
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: it could have just been dirt that was given back
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: to the family. And all the while, you know, the
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: family thinks that they've got their loved ones here, maybe
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: in some special place in the home where they passed
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: by periodically think about them, think about the good times
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: that they had and how much they'd loved them. But
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: that's not what they had. These families had no idea
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: what had happened to their family members during those moments.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: And that's to be crystal clear. Megan Hess and her mother,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Shirley Cott owned this business. People came in there. They
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: are at the lowest of low They've lost a loved
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: one and they are now going to go through the
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: process of as you mentioned, the creme a and the
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: return of the cremains in an urn, and that's what
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: they've been sold. Megan Hess sat there with families holding hands,
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: crying together. We're going to lovingly prepare your loved one.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: And here you go. And I'm my biggest question and
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: this bothers me because I don't know the answer. My
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: mother was cremated. How do I know? I know what
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: the cremains looked like as we spread her ashes. Not
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: everybody does that, but we did, and I was shocked
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: at what came out of this bag. Okay, so Joe,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: how do I know? How can I tell the difference
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: between the cremaines that I thought was my mother and
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: find out that it's dirt or maybe somebody else. It's
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: maybe somebody else's cremains. You can't, that is, unless you
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: want to go the extra step and invest in having
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: a scientific study conducted only cremaines. And You're right, Dave,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: that's what they were referred to as they are called cremines,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: to look for any kind of organic substances that are
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: not consistent with human mains that are left over after cremation.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Because the process of cremation is kind of it's something
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: that most people are not familiar with. When the body
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: is placed into the crematory, it's a gigantic oven that
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: actually operates off of natural gas. You've got multiple jets
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: that are in there that burn at an incredibly high temperature,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: and after the body has been in there for a
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: period of time, the remains are literally rendered down. Now
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: they're not completely rendered down to the smallest particle at
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: that point in time, because there's another process that the
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: body has to go through. I've seen this happen in
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: a couple of different ways. You have two process. There
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: used to be a method where they would roll the
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: remains between two opposing large marble stones marble in some cases,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: and those cremains that that remain are essentially crushed up.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: Now it's more common to have this auger that kind
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: of spins around and it renders down the remains to
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: their s all this particulate component, so that it's virtually unrecognizable.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: Of course, the most difficult thing to get rid of
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: in a cremation or the teeth, because the teeth are
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: the most resilient. So if you were in a legitimate
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: cremaine collection of cremains, if you were to look into that,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: the ideal ideal. I'm not saying it happens every time,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: but the ideal set of circumstances is that you would
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: only have essentially what appears to be dust before you.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: And many times that does not completely happen. But in
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: this case, if you were a family member and you
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: were of a mind to go and open up the urn,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: lord only knows what you would have in there, particularly
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: if it came from Hesse and her mother. It's legal
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: to donate body parts. It's legal to donate hard kidney lungs.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: I guess all those things. We signed that off on
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: the back of our driver's license. But there has to
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: be some rule of thumb. Here's some law on the
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: books about hacking up my body and selling off the
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: parts without my family knowing. There has to be something there.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: This sounds like a science fiction movie. It sounds like
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: some kind of horror film. But what is there to
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: prevent somebody from hacking off my arm and shipping it
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: off somewhere. There's any number of laws on the books
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: around the country relative to desecration of human remains, abuse
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: of a corpse, those sorts of things. But when it
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: comes to this particular sphere, all things are not the
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: same for every location. With the Hess case in particular,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: one of the interesting things from the perspective of point
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: of law is that this case was not investigated because
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: some family member went and opened up the urn and said, oh,
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: my goodness, look here, I have something that just looks
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: out of place. I found a stone in here, or
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: I found a piece of wood in here, or something
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: like that. That's not the way this happened, because, as
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: it turns out, the FEDS actually began to look at
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: this from the perspective of fraud. You have an organization
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: like Hesse's facility, where they are essentially promising one thing,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: and you have the family members paying for this very
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: specific thing and they're not receiving in return what they've
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: paid for. They're being defrauded. And that's what the FEDS
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: looked at with their investigation, and they put two and
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: two together because it's, like we said earlier on in
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: our conversation, you got a funeral home slash crematory and oh,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: by the way, you got an anatomical services company that's here,
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: and you begin to look at these two things, and
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: I think the FEDS they even said, this is odd.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Why would you have these two things associated with one another,
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: you would think that the anatomical services or the donor
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: services would be a completely separate entity, and it certainly
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be on the same patch of ground with one another.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: Non transplant anatomical donation a NATO is what that's referred
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: to as. And you think about that term non transplant.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: The elements of the human remain that are sourced for
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: the purposes of medical training are those items that we
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: would not commonly associate with, say an organ transplant, you know,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: where we think about heart, lungs, liver, kidney, eyes, those
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: sorts of things. This is a separate category. And this
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: is a category that Hess and her mother kind of
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: danced around on the edges of this business with where
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: they were actually advertising. They would go out and talk
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: about the types of services that they provided, and they
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: did have, essentially, at its found a legitimate business. But
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: possibly one of the problems that they ran into is
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: that they realized that they had a virtual goldmine on
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: their hands. And I mean that literally, Dave. Not only
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: were they piecing out these bodies to go to the
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: study of anatomical structures, but they were actually extracting the
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: gold from people's teeth the dead. Can you imagine that
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: that was actually the offensive thing that got the ball
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: rolling Joe. In twenty eighteen, one of the workers who
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: had been an assistant manager in that facility, Shirley, caught
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: the sixty nine year old mother of Megan Hess. She
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: actually took this employee and showed her her collection of
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: gold teeth. She was removing gold teeth and keeping them,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: and later Shirley actually took the gold teeth and sold
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: the gold out of them and took a family trip
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: to Disneyland. That's what got this former employee so incensed
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: that she went to the press. An article began in
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: an eight part series was done by Reuters that the
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: FBI saw and they were like, well, wait a minute,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: so they started digging into it and that's where all
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: of this began to collapse for Megan and her mother, Shirley.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: But there's one family in particular, Joe, that came out
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: of it, and this is the shocking reality. A man
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: named Jeff Peacock. His mother and father passed away in
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: twenty thirteen. They've been together a long time and Joe.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: They died within days of one another. Jeff's dad Harry
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: had negotiated their cremains before he did everything. He was
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: shopping around for the best deal, and he settled with
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: Megan Hess at Sunset masa funeral and paid for everything
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: so that when they did pass it wouldn't be left
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: to the family to decide anything. They were cremated and
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: interred within days of one another. We're talking August tenth.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: Harry was buried August twelfth, his wife passes away. It
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: was five years later, in twenty and eighteen, when the
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: story broke. The FBI calls their son Jeff and says, hey,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: we need to talk to you about something. Those cremains
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: that are in that earned, they're not your mom and dad.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: We've been able to trace that your dad's body was
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: parted out and parts of your mother are gone as well.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: That's what this man gets hit with. Five years, six
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: years after his parents are dead, he finds out that
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: this place they trusted parted out his body after death,
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: and the place they've been going with flowers and everything
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: else to share memories of their mom and dad, their
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: cremains are not there. I don't even know how you
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: plumb the depths of it. They say that there's two
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: things that will impact you in this world at a
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: real deep level. Let's divorce and death. Those two things,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: and they run a close second. Death as it applies
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: to grieving. The grieving process, it takes just let's kind
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: of frame this a little bit. It takes a while,
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: obviously for you to make it through the identifiable steps
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: of grief. Okay, it's a tough process. I know many
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: people in my listening audience can certainly identify with it.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: In I've lost a child, My family has lost a
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: number of people over the years, and it's one of
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: these things that you just you work your way through it,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: and there are identifiable steps. But can you imagine can
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: you begin to imagine that you're working your way through
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: such a traumatic life event where you have not just one,
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: but two parents that die, and at least from chronological standpoint,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: they die within a very short period of time of
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: one another. How impactful that is. It's like getting hit
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: in the chest with a ten pound sledge hammer. And somehow,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: some way, you make it through those stages. You get
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: this far out and down the road with the process,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: you get this phone call to let you know from
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: this total stranger called you out of the ballue and says, hey, look,
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: I hate to tell you this, but mom and dad,
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: their remains were sold. They were sold on the market.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: You sit there and you think, you know those hands
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: that suthed me when I was a sick child, those
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: hands that disciplined me, those hands that wrapped me up
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: and loved me when I was hurting, those hands that
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: cooked meals from me, They're gone. You have no idea
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: where they are. You thought that they were somewhere else.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: You thought that they were in a different state. And
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: I mean that in you have agreed to have them cremated,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: but they're there with you, under your watchful eye, your protection.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: Now you find out that the memory that you're going
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: to have, you can't. I don't know that there's any
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: way that you could ever really get past this at
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: this point. I don't know that I could ever measure
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: my level of anger that would rise up in me,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: Dave in a case like this. And that's the part
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: that they had to deal with when prosecuting these two.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: What they did, this mother daughter team, they sold a
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: billy goods to people that were grieving and lied to them.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: They ostensibly stole at least two hundred bodies and sold
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: them for profit. On top of that, Joe, I was
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: going to ask you, I don't know who buys these bodies,
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: but I know that when they're buying body parts or
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: bodies in whole, they're actually requiring them to not have
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: certain diseases. I'm certain of that. And we know for
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: a fact that Megan hasn't. Her mothers they lied about
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: the condition. Some of these bodies were HIV positive and
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: they lied about it. Yeah, HIV positive. And you had
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: a couple of the help groups that were involved too,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: which people talk about how contagious HIV is, and it is,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: but when compared to help you're in a completely different
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: realm at that point in time. And so the general
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: public is being exposed to these diseases, certainly anybody that's
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: working in a postal service or any kind of transport
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: services that is the means for these bits of anatomy
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: to be conveyed from one spot to the other. I
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: don't know, it sounds so simplistic me saying this. It's
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: like the height of selfishness and greed. You begin to
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: look at this, that you would take this kind of risk,
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: expose people out there far and wide to whatever you
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: know is going on from a pathology standpoint with these
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: remains that you had control of, but yet you're exposing
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: everybody to them just so that you can enrich yourself.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: I would think that the families would want the stiffest,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: harshest penalties that could possibly be imposed on these two
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: that they could possibly get, But I gotta tell you,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: I don't know if there's enough time in jail that
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: you could assign to these individuals or sentence them too.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: They were allowed to plea to take all the charges
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: and plea it down and have some charges dropped, and
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: I don't think the families are totally satisfied. I know
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: that there has been an appeals processed, but I did
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: want to point one last little bit out, Joe to
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: just to make it if it can be any worse.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: You know, when they sat with these families, they discussed donation,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: they discussed donating bodies to science, and there were instances
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: where the family, for personal or religious reasons, outright rejected that,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: said absolutely not, we won't even consider that, and they
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: did not care. They did it anyway, a violation that
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: goes beyond anything I can even imagine, I'm glad you
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: pointed that out day, because you're not talking about a
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: perpetrator here that just committed fraud by essentially dissecting someone's
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: loved one and selling their anatomical parts. You're talking about
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: somebody that, in certain cases had specific instructions I do
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: not want this to happen, but yet they went ahead
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: and move forward with it. This takes this to an
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: entirely different level. Look, and I got to say something here.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: I've got a lot of friends who are physicians or surgeons,
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: this sort of thing that I've run across over the years.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: One of the things that you have to do as
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: a medical student and as a resident is learn how
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: to train, for instance, just doing suitoring, learning how to suiture.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: I know many cases where surgeons people that were pursuing
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: surgical residencies, they would essentially take pigs and there would
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: be incisions that would be made into pigs, and they
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: would learn how to suiture on these deceased animals. And
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: when you have an opportunity to have actual sample from
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: a human being where you can study it and understand
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: the impact of what you're doing as a surgeon or
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: as a treating physician, I think that that's very important
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: and it's certainly something that's needed. There are legitimate businesses
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: out there that provide the service, and it's something I
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: think that is a requirement that you have access to
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: because you want the most highly skilled people out there
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: working in the medical community that take care of us.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: But circumstances like this, I can't imagine in my wildest
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: fantasies why anybody would take delivery from an individual that
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: was peacemealing human remains just so that they could make
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: a profit. And they did plea bargain it down. Sentences
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: have been passed surely. College sixty nine year old mother
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: and co owner of the facility, she was sentenced to
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: fifteen years in prison. She played guilty to one kind
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: of male fraud and aiding at a betting. Her daughter,
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: Megan hess At forty six, was sentenced to twenty years
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: in prison. You know, as I mentioned, there was a
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: lot of pleaing going on and that was what they
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: were able to negotiate a twenty year sentence that was appealed,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: that was upheld by the court on mail fraud and
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: aiding and a betting. They are going to prison. Shirley coage,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: maybe for life, with a fifteen year sentence at nearly
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: seventy years old. Megan Hess, she'll still get out while
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: she's still alive. A lot of the family is not
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: happy about that. Joe, Yeah, and I can't imagine that.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: I don't know that there's any amount of time that
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: she could give to these people that would repair the
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: damage that's been done. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: is Body Backs.