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Bodies and wrong ashes
A British funeral director, Robert Bush, who ran Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in Hull, faced sentencing after pleading guilty to 67 offences spanning 12 years that affected hundreds of victims.
“31 bodies that should have been cremated months earlier”
LBC said police found 31 bodies that should have been cremated months earlier, including a stillborn baby that had been there for almost two years, and more than 100 sets of ashes, some with name labels and letters attached to the box.
The BBC described the raid in March 2024 as a “horror scene” and said “Some 35 bodies and more than 100 sets of ashes were found by police” when the business was raided.
In court, the BBC reported that Bush’s offences included failing to bury and cremate people and giving out wrong ashes, while LBC said he gave grieving families the wrong ashes and kept bodies on stretchers on the floor in filthy storage boxes.
Prosecutor and witness accounts
Prosecutor Christopher Paxton KC told Hull Crown Court that Bush breached trust “on an almost industrial scale,” as the sentencing hearing opened and the court heard how the scandal was uncovered “by chance” on March 6, 2024.
The Hull Story reported that Bush, 48, was on holiday in the US with his daughter when Evergreen Funeral Directors directors Gary Pickering and Steve Emmerson contacted a casual worker, Patrick Moore, to collect a body from a care home in Bourne Street, Hull.
The Hull Story said Moore commented “You don’t know the half of it. Bodies have been there for years,” and that Emmerson and Pickering were “shocked by what they saw” after arriving at the Hessle Road premises at 7pm on March 6.
In the same account, Mr Paxton said Moore “counted up to 29 bodies, describing it as being something from a ‘horror scene’,” and the court heard police officers then found “a large number of human bodies” in a cold storage area.
Regulation calls and sentencing
As the five-day sentencing hearing at Hull Crown Court continued, families described being given other people’s ashes and having bodies left at the premises for months, with the Independent saying Bush left families “broken” after bodies were left “to rot”.
“left families ‘broken’ after bodies were left ‘to rot’”
The Independent reported that John Banyard, who was given the wrong ashes of his close friend John Cargill, said: “If you can’t trust a funeral undertaker, who can you trust? How can someone be so callous, cold and calculated?”
France 24 said police found bodies left “stored on racks” and uncremated while relatives were handed other people’s ashes, and it reported that Bush previously pleaded guilty to 67 offences spanning 12 years and affecting hundreds of victims.
France 24 also said Jasmine Beverley, whose son Sunny was stillborn in May 2022, told BBC radio that she discovered Sunny’s remains were still in a brown envelope on the floor “almost two years after we’d had the funeral,” describing the discovery as “distressing,” while the sentencing hearing was set to hear statements from over 100 victims.
