The Binge Crimes: Lady Mafia - A Small Town Funeral Home Hiding a Big Secret - Cover Up: Body Brokers

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

In the small town of Montrose, Colorado - Megan Hess ran the Sunset Mesa funeral home. Known for her kindness and warmth, Megan was beloved by her customers. But behind this sweet demeanor, Megan was hiding a dark, twisted and shocking secret operation. What was going on in the back room of Sunset Mesa funeral home? Find out on this season of Cover Up: Body Brokers, listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribers to The Binge can listen to all episodes of Cover Up: Body Brokers right now, completely ad-free. Catch new episodes of Cover Up: Body Brokers every week wherever you get your podcasts or subscribe to The Binge and unlock all episodes ad-free today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, Witness listeners. If the Gary DeVore case left you hungry for more shockingly wild true crime, you're going to want to hear about this next one. From the same team that brought you Witnessed, Cover Up Body Brokers unravels what may be the most outrageous and twisted criminal scheme to ever be documented on a podcast. We travel from Hollywood, California to the small town of Montrose, Colorado, where we meet Megan Hess, who runs the local

Sunset Mesa Funeral Home. Megan was known to be thoughtful and kind amongst her community, offering discounts on normally expensive cremations in a town where many are poor. But in the shadows of kindness lurked a shocking and disturbing secret operation. In the back of the funeral home, Megan's elderly mother Shirley was dismembering the dead bodies for Megan to then take the parts, heads, torsos, legs, to companies that claim to do medical research. Megan and Shirley were body brokers, trading on a dark network where people buy and sell human bodies. What exactly were the two women after? Who was really buying those stolen bodies, and why? And how did this twisted operation eventually come crashing down? Find out on Cover Up Body Brokers. Take a listen.

About 10 years ago, a woman named Charlotte Downing was working for a funeral home in Colorado. The place looked homey, a low-slung, ranch-style house, off-white, sort of stucco-looking, neatly mowed lawn. Sharla was in her late 50s, petite, energetic. She didn't always go into the office, but on this day, she had to get a few things done. She wandered into the back of Sunset Mesa Funeral Home, where the embalming took place.

I remember one day going into the prep room, and I can't even remember why, but I opened the freezer door. And the bodies, there were so many bodies, they were stacked on the shelves where they were supposed to be, and then they were just kind of piled together on a couple of garnies in the middle. Some of them had sheets over them. Some of them didn't. Some of them were actually laying flat. Some of them looked like they had just been thrown in. Bodies in a funeral home. That's normal, right? But not like this. A freezer in a funeral home is supposed to be neat and organized. Bodies should be covered and tagged. That is not what Sharla saw. Here, the bodies were naked, haphazardly tossed on top of one another, legs intertwined with legs. There were so many bodies, there wasn't even room for Sharla to step

inside further. She quickly found her boss, the owner of the funeral home. Her name was Megan Hess. I said, Megan, what in the world? And she said, oh, there's a funeral home in Grand Junction that's way behind on Cremains and cremating, and we're trying to help them get caught up. Their crematory broke,

and so we're cremating for them. Sometimes when I get in a situation where it is just totally beyond me, I just clam up. Charlotte tried to calm down. She was in a difficult spot. What she saw didn't seem right, but she really needed this job. And her job was to tell everybody how great Sunset Mesa was. She was the funeral home's PR person.

So she told herself, what do I really know about the nitty gritty that goes on in a funeral home? And Megan had an explanation. She always had an explanation for everything. She could be very intimidating. But also, she had so much confidence in herself that when she said something, you believed it, she never stuttered. But Megan's confidence was hiding something. Sharla had no idea where those bodies were heading next. She was going to get swept up in a sprawling cross-continental criminal enterprise,

and Sharla would pay a very steep personal price. I'm Ashley Fonts. I've been an investigative reporter for decades. I've covered a lot of crime, some really dark stuff. But the story I'm going to tell you about the place where Sharla worked, Sunset Mesa Funeral Home, it's not like any crime you've ever heard of. It's so much stranger, so much more twisted. What happened at that funeral home violated something at the very core of what makes us human.

It changed how people in this small town think about death and what happens to us after. From Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment, this is Cover Up Up Body Brokers. Episode 1, The Funeral Director. We see this funeral home as this big mystery, mysterious building. Oh, I'm so sorry. If you want to, you can reach behind you and we'll shut the door. That might help.

We only have four chiming clocks in our house. Only four. When I first learned about Charlotte, I knew right away that I wanted to talk with her. From what I could tell, she had a complicated relationship to this story. She's a grandmother who wears wireframe glasses. Her blonde hair is in a neat bob and it's gone gray near the roots. Even when Sharla's saying something serious, she'll punctuate it with a laugh, something self-deprecating. I'm going to check in with you as we go along because I want you to feel comfortable.

Yeah, because you're the one that got me in this mess. Oh, Sharla, I'm going to enjoy this despite the heavy stuff that we're going to talk about because it's just so easy to talk to you. So, Charlie, why did you want to talk to us for this story? As you know, because we have discussed it, I vowed I would never give an interview about what had happened. I've tried to keep a very, very low profile. Search for Cover Up Body Brokers wherever you get your podcasts to start listening today. Get new episodes every week or subscribe on Apple Podcasts to binge all episodes ad-free today.