Estimated read time: 9-10 minutes
IDAHO FALLS — Sandy Wilson has waited years to tell her story.
She and her family are among thousands of victims who are part of what investigators believe is the largest body-snatching case in American history.
It took place for nearly a decade, and at the center of it all is a mother and daughter who operated a funeral home in Montrose, Colorado, about 60 miles south of Grand Junction.
"For years, I didn't tell people at my work, I didn't tell my cousins, there were so many people I just didn't even tell," Wilson, who now lives in Saratoga Springs, tells EastIdahoNews.com.
But now Wilson is ready to tell all, starting at the beginning.
Marriage, life and dying 6 days apart
Wilson is the daughter of Harry and Lillian Peacock. The couple met when Harry moved to Utah from Florida to work in the oil fields, got married when Lilian was 16 and eventually settled in Colorado.
"My dad was an oilman and worked really hard. My mom stayed at home most of the time. They just lived a great life and provided for all our family," Wilson recalls.
Ten years ago, on Aug. 6, 2013, Harry Peacock was getting in his truck with a friend to go have coffee when he collapsed. It was a heart attack, and even though he was 86, Wilson wasn't prepared to lose her dad.
"I remember getting the call from my sister, and she told me Dad passed away. I was in such denial that I tried to go to work that day, and I was just sobbing," Wilson says. "Finally, one of my colleagues ushered me out to my car and said, 'You can't be here today.'"
Before he died, Wilson's dad purchased a cremation package so his death wouldn't be a financial burden on the family.
His body was supposed to go to the Grand Junction mortuary that made the arrangements, but for some unknown reason, it was sent to be cremated at Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose.
The cremains were returned within a few days and before they were buried, the family held a gravesite service followed by a luncheon.
Wilson spent the night at her mom's house and left the next day to return home to southern Utah.
"In the middle of the night, my phone rings and it's my niece. She told me Grandma (Wilson's mom) had passed away. I thought I must be dreaming, so I called her back and she said, 'Yes, it's true,'" Wilson says.
The shock and sadness of losing one parent was now infinitely more painful as Wilson's 76-year-old mom was also gone.
"I was just really mad because I wanted to have time with her. I thought, 'Mom can travel. She can stay with us two or three weeks, spend time with all the grandkids and we can do all this stuff,'" Wilson says.
Back to Colorado Wilson and her family went. Because they had just used Sunset Mesa for their dad, they let the funeral home handle their mom's cremation, too.
"Within a few days, we got the cremains back. We drove back to Colorado and had a cremation for my mom and tried to go on with our life without our parents," Wilson says.
'Their bodies have been sold'
Life went on as normal until 2017. Wilson was at Disneyland with her family when her sister called out of the blue.
"She said, 'I've got some bad news. I'm sorry to be ruining your trip to Disneyland, but the FBI called me and they think Mom and Dad are victims of this crime where people's bodies were dismembered and the body parts were sold,'" Wilson says.
Wilson was stunned and didn't know how to react. The FBI and Colorado Bureau of Investigation were in the middle of their investigation, and they asked her not to talk to anyone about the case.
She held out hope they were wrong, but a few weeks later, as Wilson was in the drive-thru at In-N-Out Burger, her sister called again.
"She said, 'You need to pull over. It's been confirmed that Dad's heart and eyes were sold to a plastination company, and we don't know what happened to the rest of his body. As for Mom, they think they sold her body – like her whole body – and it's true. It did happen to them,'" Wilson recalls.
Plastination is a technique used to preserve bodies or body parts. Water and fat are replaced by plastics so dead body parts can be touched and do not decay. Bodies are often used for research or in museums.
Wilson had so many questions. If they didn't bury her parents' cremains, where were they? And whose did they bury? What happened to her handsome father and beautiful mother?
"My mom was one of the sweetest, most modest people you would ever meet. She wouldn't want to be the talk of the town, and she became the talk of the town," Wilson says.
'A box was leaking body fluid'
Wilson and her family learned from investigators that for at least eight years, Shirley Koch, 69, and her daughter Megan Hess, 46, were selling bodies to plastination companies, private collections or foreign countries without telling the loved ones of the deceased people.
"We're talking 400 or 500 bodies and well over 1,000 victims who are impacted by what Megan Hess and Shirley Koch did," says state Rep. Matt Soper. The Republican serves in the Colorado General Assembly and many of the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home victims live or lived in his district.
He learned his state was the only one in America that did not require licensing of professional funeral homes and, over the years, there had been complaints about Sunset Mesa.
"Five times Colorado's Department of Regulatory Agencies sent inspectors to the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home, and five times they were turned away because at that time, in order to inspect a funeral home, the state had to have landowner permission," Soper says.
There were no felony laws on the books to arrest Koch and Hess for desecrating and selling hundreds of bodies, but investigators were able to charge them with mail fraud.
"A box was leaking body fluid at the post office. That's how they ultimately got indicted for mail fraud for not filling out the right forms for sending a body through the mail," Soper says.
As prosecutors prepared for trial, Wilson found body part price lists online. She also discovered a message Hess sent to a potential buyer: "Meeting with hospice on the 4th … opening the floodgates of donors. They have four or five deaths a day. Get ready!!!! … How about a deal on full embalmed spines … $950?"
Over time, Wilson learned more about her parents' remains.
"The plastination company filled my dad's eyes and heart with plastic. We don't know if it went to a university or a place like that where medical students could study things, and we don't know what happened to the rest of his body," she says. "We have no idea where my mom ended up. They think she was sent to another body broker place in Las Vegas. When the FBI got there to raid them, there were buckets and bins of body parts in the back parking lot. We have no idea where she went from there."
'It feels like they died a second time'
As court proceedings began, Wilson and other victims attended as often as they could. Hess and Koch claimed they never did anything wrong, and the bodies were used for research purposes, but eventually, in July 2022, both pleaded guilty.
Koch was sentenced to 15 years in prison, and Hess received 20. They are appealing their sentences.
Soper was also in the courtroom many days and began working to make sure what happened to Wilson and thousands of others would never happen again.
"Every single victim has said to me, 'It feels like my loved one died a second time,' or 'It feels like after my loved one passed away, they were murdered,'" he says.
Soper got legislation passed that makes it a felony to abuse a corpse in Colorado. Another change he helped institute allows for state investigators to go into funeral homes when complaints are filed without needing permission from the owners.
That law has been on the books 18 months, and already 12 funeral homes have been investigated, including the Return to Nature Funeral Home in Penrose, Colorado. Jon and Carie Hallford, the owners of the funeral home, were arrested last week after investigators say nearly 200 decaying corpses were found improperly stored at their facility.
'I want people to remember their kindness'
Brian Wood, who owns Wood Funeral Home and Crematory in Idaho Falls, says Hess and Koch make funeral homes look bad, but most are good and funeral directors want to help people who need their services.
"In any career, you can lose your way and you can make bad choices but ultimately people that serve in this industry do it because they love to serve and take care of people," Wood tells EastIdahoNews.com.
As cremation becomes more popular, many funeral homes are trying to be more open about the process with clients. Wood has a window where people can watch their loved one be placed into the crematorium. They can even push a button that starts the cremation machine.
Although Soper has changed the law in Colorado, he says more needs to be done but at the national level.
"Megan Hess and Shirley Koch were not the big fish here. The big fish are the people who are buying bodies, particularly those outside the United States, and to fully address this particular issue of public policy, we need Congress to act," Soper says.
Wilson agrees and is glad the two women who caused her family so much pain are now behind bars.
"I said there were two things that would make me happy. I want to see them in cuffs and if they serve a day in prison, I'm OK with it," she says.
Now that many know how her parents died and some of what happened after their deaths, Wilson hopes they will be remembered for how they lived.
"They were just such a force in their communities. They were always trying to help and were just kind, normal people. I want people to remember that," she says.
