She called it the “most disturbing case” of her career. In ruling, the judge said, “This is way beyond what is being negotiated in the United States.” As reported by the American newspaper ‘Denver Post’.
The story is actually quite scary. Relatives entrusted their deceased relatives to two funeral directors in the US state of Colorado. But instead of burning the corpses, the women chopped them up and sold the body parts: heads, limbs, spines. Now the two, Megan H.* (46) and Shirly K.* (69), have received long prison terms: H. has to go to prison for 20 years and K. 15, reports the British “BBC”.
560 corpses desecrated
The court considers it proven that the women, who are mother and daughter, desecrated a total of 560 bodies between 2010 and 2018 and sold parts of them without permission. In some cases, they would have sold whole bodies.
Megan H. and Shirly K. also forged documents to sell HIV- or hepatitis-infected body parts, according to the Denver Post. The human remains were mainly used for medical research.
A thousand dollars per cremation
The women ran a funeral parlor in the small town of Montrose. There they charged thousands of dollars for cremations, which, according to the indictment, never took place. In other cases, they would have offered the cremation for free if the next of kin agreed to “donate” parts of the bodies.
The responsible FBI investigator Leonard Carollo, according to a statement, was harshly critical. “These greedy women have defrauded hundreds of victims and desecrated the bodies of their loved ones.”
The two women confessed. The case was made public in 2018 by a Reuters report.
* Names known