Megan Hess, a former owner of the Colorado funeral home, Sunset Mesa, has pleaded guilty to secretly dissecting corpses and selling body parts without consent from relatives of the deceased. Hess and her mother, Shirley Koch, launched a non-profit donor service organization in 2009. They forged dozens of body donor consent forms and sold the body parts for profit. They have both been convicted and sentenced for their crimes. In this episode of Body Bags, forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan and special guest co-host Dave Mack discuss the purpose of funeral homes, how one decides what is done with a loved one's remains, the legal procedures for deciding what is done with bodily remains, using bodies for medical purposes, and much more. Show Notes: 0:00 - Intro 0:45 - Background 2:40 - What is the purpose of a funeral home? 5:05 - Gross Anatomy 5:50 - Deciding what is done with a body after death 8:10 - Donor Services and Megan Hess 13:35 - Can you tell if someone’s ashes aren’t real? 16:00 - Legal procedures for remains 18:10 - Non-transplant anatomical donation 19:30 - Jeff Peacock and finding out his parents were victims of Hess 23:40 - Body parts sold having certain diseases 25:30 - Using bodies for medical purposes 27:50 - Sentencing for Megan Hess and her mother Shirley Koch 28:30 - Wrap-up

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