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LONDON: A British funeral director was jailed for 20 years on Friday for deceiving families who had paid him to bury or cremate their relatives’ bodies, giving some the ashes of other people in what police described as “unthinkable” crimes.
In one case, the parents of a stillborn baby were given the ashes of what experts said were of a young adult, while their child’s body was found by police in a brown paper bag.
Prosecutors said Robert Bush, who ran Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in Hull, northern England, breached the trust of grieving families “on an almost industrial scale”.
Bush’s deception was discovered in 2024 when, while he was on holiday, a casual worker told other funeral directors that bodies had been left for years, describing it as “a horror scene”, prosecutor Chris Paxton said.
