Body Brokers

For eight years, Megan Hess ran Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in the small town of Montrose, Colorado. She promised clients discounts on normally expensive cremations, a seeming kindness in a town where many are poor. But in the back of the funeral home, Megan’s elderly mother Shirley was actually dismembering the dead. And then Megan was selling the body parts – heads, torsos, legs – to companies that claim to do medical research.The families who trusted Megan –- they had no idea what she was really up to. When they came to pick up the ashes of their loved ones, they instead received a mixture of ashes of various people. They had no idea of their betrayal until some received a strange phonecall from the FBI.Megan and Shirley were body brokers, trading on a dark network where people buy and sell bodies. What exactly were the two women after? Who was really buying those stolen bodies, and why?Body Brokers is part of The Binge - subscribe to listen to all episodes, all at once, ad-free rig