Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Funeral Home of Horrors - Megan Hess and Shirley Koch

Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

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True Crime, News

3.9 • 7.6K Ratings

🗓️ 12 March 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

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Summary

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.

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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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Transcript

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0:00.0	Body bags with Joseph Scott Morgan.
0:19.7	We're going to have a discussion about case that is so horrific and it's not just a case,
0:27.6	but several cases that just the mere thought of will certainly give you pause when you begin to think about
0:34.4	what's going to happen to me when I die. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body bags.
0:41.5	I am so pleased to welcome back to Body bags my buddy Dave Mac investigator
0:51.1	reporter with Kromelon. What a day for you to come back. The cases we're going to be discussing
0:55.9	today it would make stronger men certainly think I would think and certainly something you probably
1:01.3	didn't think about when you got the call from me. Joe it's great to be back. I really appreciate the
1:06.4	opportunity to be here with you. First of all, every time around you I learned something that is
1:11.2	totally foreign. You know something I didn't even know I didn't know kind of thing, but when I found out
1:16.3	we were going to be talking about a funeral home. What happens after we pass from this world to whatever
1:23.2	one believes is next and we all have different feelings about that. I've told you before my wife she
1:29.0	believes in you know, mausoleum having that place to go to visit the dead. I am of the mindset. It
1:36.4	doesn't mean much to me, but if I found out somebody was doing something with my body after I was
1:42.6	gone that I didn't say they could do I would have a problem with that a big problem and I think most
1:48.2	people do. I think we have an understanding that we live on this earth. We have certain rights
1:53.4	that we expect while we're alive and we have certain beliefs in when we die. Finding out that
2:00.4	somebody could do something to a loved one after they are gone that really grinds my gears and
2:06.4	something I didn't see coming. Joe most people you don't give it a second thought most of the time.
2:11.7	The word victim gets thrown around a lot nowadays, but can you say victimize the dead perhaps
2:18.0	I think in the cases we're going to discuss today your victimizing family. Let me ask you this
2:23.5	Joe a person dies and at that point we know that a body gets picked up and they get taken somewhere
	...

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