In May 2024, Colorado enacted two laws that will tighten regulations on the funeral industry. The legislation comes in the wake of several incidents at funeral homes across the state in which human remains were mishandled and, in some cases, family members received fake ashes of loved ones.
The Conversation U.S. spoke with Tanya D. Marsh, a professor at Wake Forest University who teaches the nation’s only course on funeral and cemetery law, to better understand whether the new Colorado legislation will prevent future funeral home scandals.
Can you describe the scandals?
In the past couple of years, Colorado has had two major funeral home scandals.
In 2023, the operators of the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose, Colorado, pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges. They admitted that they lied to hundreds of families from 2010 to 2018, promising to cremate their loved ones but instead selling their bodies to so-called body brokers. Body brokers operate in a gray area of the law and provide donated human remains to universities and companies engaged in medical and scientific research.
Megan Hess, 46, was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and Shirley Koch, 69, was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
In early 2024, the owners of Return to Nature Funeral Home in Penrose, Colorado, were charged with mishandling the remains of nearly 200 individuals. They have been charged in state court with the crimes of abuse of a corpse, money laundering, theft and forgery. Owners Jon and Carie Hallford claimed to sell cremation services. Instead, they allegedly stored the remains in the funeral home without refrigeration and returned dry concrete powder to the families in place of ashes. Court documents say the bodies were stored “in rooms infested by bugs and the liquid decomposition of other bodies.”
In May 2024, Colorado enacted two laws that will tighten regulations on the funeral industry. The legislation comes in the wake of several incidents at funeral homes across the state in which human remains were mishandled and, in some cases, family members received fake ashes of loved ones.
The Conversation U.S. spoke with Tanya D. Marsh, a professor at Wake Forest University who teaches the nation’s only course on funeral and cemetery law, to better understand whether the new Colorado legislation will prevent future funeral home scandals.
Can you describe the scandals?
In the past couple of years, Colorado has had two major funeral home scandals.
In 2023, the operators of the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose, Colorado, pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges. They admitted that they lied to hundreds of families from 2010 to 2018, promising to cremate their loved ones but instead selling their bodies to so-called body brokers. Body brokers operate in a gray area of the law and provide donated human remains to universities and companies engaged in medical and scientific research.
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