RANGELY | Longtime Rangely residents Harry and Lillian Peacock died within a week of each other in 2013. Before his death, Harry had “shopped around” to find the best price for cremation services, according to his son Jeff.
The late Harry and Lilian Peacock of Rangely died in 2013. In 2018, the family was notified that the funeral home was under investigation for illegal “body brokering.” | COURTESY PHOTO
Harry made arrangements with Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors in Montrose, Colorado. When he passed away of natural causes, his body was taken to the funeral home for cremation. Harry’s memorial service on Aug. 10, 2013, was the last time Jeff spoke with his mother, Lillian, who died on Aug. 12. Reeling from the loss of both parents in close succession, the family used the same funeral service in Montrose. The couple’s cremains were interred in the Rangely Cemetery under a double headstone.
Nothing could have prepared Jeff Peacock for the phone call he received in 2018 from the FBI, alerting him to an investigation into illegal activities at Sunset Mesa. Harry and Lillian were allegedly among hundreds of deceased persons entrusted to Sunset Mesa’s care whose bodies were sold, either in parts or whole, to “body brokers.”
“Dad was parted out,” Jeff said. “Mom’s entire body is gone, we have no idea where she went. We got a box of unknown ashes.”
Grave robbing and body snatching are generally relegated to gothic fiction and sci-fi, but there’s a lucrative international market for bodies and body parts. “Body brokers” or non-transplant tissue banks sell entire cadavers or parts of cadavers for scientific research and education, a practice that has been going on for millennia and to which many aspects of modern medicine are indebted. Some parts are “plasticized” for educational purposes. Bodies that are “donated to science” are legally signed over for that purpose in much the same way organ donors sign off on their organs being used for transplants.
That wasn’t the case at Sunset Mesa, according to the FBI, which issued warrants for Sunset Mesa director Megan Hess and her mother Shirley Koch in February 2018 after multiple complaints were filed against the business. Hess and Koch pled guilty in July 2022 to mail fraud and are due for sentencing in November and January, respectively.
The case has been frustrating for Peacock, and other families affected. “They talked to my sister about my mom the same week they cut up my dad and sent him out,” Peacock said. Hess and Koch haven’t acknowledged their guilt, he added, despite their plea deals. Reportedly, they lived a lavish lifestyle off the money they made as body brokers, leaving little likelihood a civil case would provide recompense for the families.
“It’s hard to get closure,” Peacock said. “They robbed us of that.”
He describes the situation as a “violation of trust.”
“You don’t expect to need to watch a funeral home,” he said.
There is little on the books by way of regulation in these cases. The massive size of the Montrose case prompted legislation this year. HB 22-1073, introduced by Rep. Matt Soper, R-Delta, Rep. Dylan Roberts, D-Avon, and Sens. Kerry Donovan, D-Vail, and Don Coram, R-Montrose, increases legal power to inspect funeral homes and crematoriums.
Asked what he thinks his father would say about the situation, Peacock said the family tries to approach everything with a sense of humor.
“My parents are in heaven and my mom is chewing him [my dad] out for insisting on getting a good deal,” Peacock said.
By NIKI TURNER – editor@editorht1885.com
