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For the better part of a decade, Megan Hess and her mother, Shirley Koch, owned and operated Sunset Mesa funeral home in Montrose, Colorado. However, when the FBI discovered what was going on behind closed doors, this mother-daughter duo's grisly scheme was finally exposed...
Mother-Daughter Morticians
For three years, Megan Hess and her mother provided an essential service for those who needed direction during the worst time of their lives. The pair opened Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in 2009 with pure intentions. However, it wasn't long before Hess embarked on a lucrative opportunity that would leave both her and her 66-year-old mother behind bars...
Supposed Business
At first, the operation appeared legitimate—and, for a time, it was. Bodies came in, mourners handed them the cash, and cremations continued. However, one treacherous decision led Hess and Koch down an irredeemable path...
A Scheme Is Born
The year after Sunset Mesa opened its doors, Megan introduced her latest project, Donor Services. Hess described it as a "small, family-owned business" structured as a nonprofit. The premise of Donor Services was simple: Megan and her mother operated a non-transplant tissue bank—i.e., body brokering.
"It's for the good of the world," Megan said, "and I like to help people."
Body Brokers
The pair invited individuals to donate the bodies of their loved ones, which they would then dismember and sell to medical labs. The state of Colorado didn't regulate body brokering, nor did it require a license to become a funeral director. From the outside, it appeared legal, but something much darker was going on behind the scenes...
Professional Scammers
The wall of Megan's office boasted her Ph.D. in mortuary science—a degree that mysteriously vanished from her website once everything came to a head. The Donor Services brochure read, "Be a hero. Be an organ donor." Unfortunately, for hundreds of unlucky families, Megan and Shirley didn't offer them a choice in the matter...
Unsettling Lies
For years, Megan and Shirley promised grieving families that their loved ones would be cremated and safely returned to them. However, on March 17, 2020, an unsealed indictment revealed that the wholesome mother-daughter morticians had been deceiving mourners since 2009...
Simple Process
Megan made donating to Donor Services as easy as possible. Her cremation marketing website featured a drop-down menu from which the donor could fill out some paperwork, hit "Add to Cart," and enter a credit card number. Most body brokers offered to cremate the rest of the donor's body for free, but Donor Services was able to turn a profit on the dead in more ways than one...
Get Rich Quick
Megan charged families a minimum of $195 just to donate the body. If the relatives wanted the cremated remains returned to them, they had to fork over another $300. Although donation was cheaper than cremation, plenty of families were willing to pay $695 to know the exact fate of their loved ones—but it turned out that the only ones who really knew what happened to the bodies at Sunset Mesa were Megan Hess and Shirley Koch.
Twisted Scheme
Without families' knowledge or consent, Megan and Shirley were selling the deceased bodies of their loved ones—or individual torsos, limbs, and severed heads—to scientists, educators, and medical facilities around the country. In order to keep the ruse going, mourning families would receive the cremated remains of someone else entirely.
They Kept It Going
By accepting money from families for the supposed cremation of their loved ones, Megan was able to generate a profit by selling the bodies instead. The extra money allowed them to offer lower "cremation" prices than their competitor, thus ensuing "a constant supply of bodies for her and Koch's body broker services business," said the indictment.
Lucrative Business
In 2016, a price quote Megan sent to a medical training lab in Arizona priced torsos at $1,000 each. A foot went for $125, a knee for $250, heads for $500, and a pelvis with upper legs for $1,200. Two of Megan's former employees said that Megan often bragged about the profitability of her illegal body part sales...
Striking a Goldmine
One former employee, Kari Escher, said that Shirley exhibited particularly morbid behavior. Shirley, who embalmed and dismembered the bodies, would pull teeth from a number of corpses to extract the gold in crowns and fillings, which paid for her family vacations to Disneyland in California. She often boasted this to Escher, who was horrified by Shirley's actions.
Collecting Souvenirs
"She showed me her collection of gold teeth one day," said Escher, who once managed Megan and Shirley's cremation-marketing business. Although it remains legal in most states to sell items recovered from cadavers—including gold dental work—most of the bodies belonged to individuals that were supposed to be cremated. Megan once gloated that she and Shirley had secured a remarkable $40,000 in one month just from gold fillings.
One Victim's Experience
Gina Pace was once an esthetician, artist, and furniture-maker. Once described as "the most beautiful multitude of glorious contradictions," she died in a 2017 car crash right before her 51st birthday. Nastassja Olson, Gina's daughter, flew from Portland to Colorado to claim her mother's body, which was already at Sunset Mesa...
Suspicious Behavior
Although the drive was an hour from where Gina lived, the county coroner said that Sunset Mesa was one of their preferred funeral homes and crematories. However, after Natassja's first phone call with Megan, she knew that something was awry—and it wasn't the only instance of Megan's suspicious behavior.
Having Doubts
Megan told Natassja that she and Shirley were about to embalm her mother. "I said I didn't want her to be embalmed," Natassja recalled. "I wanted to cremate her. So I thought that was odd." The strangeness continued when Megan posted an online obituary with the option to donate flowers through Sunset Mesa despite contrary requests from the family...
Rising Concerns
At the funeral home, Megan hovered over Natassja and her family, refusing to leave them alone with the body. When an uncle tried to move the blanket covering Pace's body during the viewing, Megan made a scene—and when he hugged his sister's body, he said that it felt like her arm had already been detached.
Clear Demands
Natassja remembered Megan probing her with questions, specifically regarding whether her mother was a "donor." Although Megan didn't explain what that meant to Natassja, her answer remained clear: absolutely not. Then, in early 2018, Natassja stumbled across an article detailing an investigation into Sunset Mea...
Something Was Wrong
The article filled her with dread. She opened the urn that she was led to believe held her mother's ashes only to find strange pieces of metal among the remains. Her mother had no metal on her clothing when she was cremated, nor did she have any metal inside of her body. Olson knew it was time to contact the FBI.
Neverending Mystery
"Finding that information out that you could potentially not even have the cremains, the last little bit of your loved ones, is just heartbreaking," she said. "To have to live that all over again and have just the mystery of what was done to them without your consent."
Sadly, Natassja was far from the only mourner whose life was turned upside-down by the discovery...
Disturbing Secrets
"Why go to someone who owns their own crematory?" Megan Hess rhetorically posed to the Montrose Daily Press. "Because then you know you’re getting your loved one’s ashes back."
For Jerry Espinoza, the truth behind the ashes that he received from Sunset Mesa was even more troubling than his family could have anticipated...
Deplorable Discovery
When Jerry Espinoza found out that the cremated remains returned to a family from Sunset Mesa had actually turned out to be cement mix, he began to question whether it really was his father's ashes that he and his family had scattered in his honor. Unfortunately, the reality was even worse than he could have imagined.
Heartache Ahead
Espinoza's father had passed away after a brief and difficult battle with cancer. The ashes were evenly divided amongst family members; Jerry had his preserved in a necklace while his daughter, Stephanie, kept hers in an urn. When Espinoza's son, Bobby, traveled to Lizard Head Pass to scatter his father's ashes in 2014, he finally felt peace—but it didn't last for long.
Inconsistencies
"He told Bobby, ‘That’s where I want my ashes thrown,’ so that’s where we did it," Jerry said. "Of course, it wasn't his ashes."
After learning of the accusations against Sunset Mesa, Espinoza and his siblings decided to send a sample to a lab in order to verify its authenticity. Previously, Espinoza had compared the necklace containing his father's ashes to the ashes he had from a friend who had passed away. They were totally different.
Non-Human Remains
When the lab called with the results, Jerry said that he already knew deep down that the answer would be unbearable. He was at work when it was concluded that his father's alleged ashes were not of human origin.
"I went in and told the boss, 'I'm going home,'" he said. "I took a drive.
Sadly, this was far from a unique instance for the grieving families who turned to Sunset Mesa for funeral services...
Neverending Nightmare
Kayla Lyons lost her mother, Doris, in 2017. When her mother passed away after complications from a fall during a trip to Colorado, her family arranged cremation with Sunset Mesa, who assured Lyons that they would "take really good care of [her] mom" and "be really gentle with her."
Grim Receipts
One year after her mother's death, Lyons was contacted by an FBI agent who asked if Lyons had signed any paperwork authorizing Doris' body to be donated. "Absolutely not," Lyons said—which is when she was informed that the FBI had receipts indicating where her mother's body parts had been sold.
Anyone Could Be a Victim
Since the initial raid on Sunset Mesa, the FBI has received calls from hundreds of individuals from across the country. In Montrose, a woman sued Megan and Shirley, claiming that her husband's cremated remains were missing when she arrived to collect them. By the time they were delivered, they also contained bizarre pieces of metal.
Desperate for Answers
There were so many calls from the victims of Sunset Mesa's gruesome scheme that the FBI had to set up a special phone line and email address, both of which were inundated with distraught mourners wondering about the fate of their loved ones. Most have yet to hear back, including Jerry Espinoza, who was told to wait for a mass email with more information.
Mutual Grief
In the meanwhile, families are connecting over their frustration. A Facebook group for potential victims of Sunset Mesa contains over 130 members.
"It’s just a very odd feeling," said Natassja Olsen. "She's gone, so you ask, does it really matter? But it really, really does matter. It's not fair to do something like that without your consent."