U.K. funeral director admits dozens of botched cremations

In this file photo, police vehicles are parked in Cheshire, England, Saturday, Aug. 1, 2015. (AP/Rui Vieira)

A British funeral director Thursday pleaded guilty to 30 counts of preventing a lawful burial, by failing to cremate bodies and giving grieving families the wrong ashes.

Local police found 35 bodies and 100 sets of ashes when they raided the Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in the city of Hull in March 2024.

They determined that there should only have been four bodies there “with others being identified as having been there much longer than necessary”.

Humberside Police said in a statement it had been “an incredibly heartbreaking and complex sixteen-month investigation” following “concern for the care of the deceased”.

Robert Bush, 48, admitted Thursday to 30 charges of preventing a lawful and decent burial, meaning he has now pleaded guilty to a total of 67 allegations following an earlier plea hearing.

He was bailed until a sentencing hearing due on July 27, but was told by Judge Nicholas Hilliard a prison term was “inevitable”.

The rampant malpractice relates to funeral plans involving “over 150 individuals”, prosecutor Chris Paxton said, with 240 people set to provide victim impact statements to the court.

Bush previously pleaded guilty to 30 counts of fraud by false representation relating to the same 30 people -- telling grieving families that the bodies had been cremated when they were in fact still at the funeral home.

He also admitted to four fraud charges following pregnancy losses, by presenting ashes to women falsely claiming they were the remains of their unborn babies.

He was also guilty of theft from a dozen charities for failing to send donations collected at funerals.

‘Monster’

“The distress and devastation that this has caused for those families is simply unimaginable,” said Detective Superintendent Alan Curtis.

Karen Dry, whose parents’ funerals were handled by Bush, said the actions were “heartbreaking”, calling the funeral director a “monster”.

“I’ve had people ringing me saying, ‘I had a tattoo done for my grandma, from her ashes’, and it turns out that the ashes that she’s now got tattooed are not her grandma’s,” Dry told the Press Association news agency.

“Thirty-one families believed that their loved one had been cremated, when in fact they remained on site within the Legacy premises,” Curtis said.

“Other families ... were left waiting for ashes that have never been provided, or were deceived by Bush and given ashes that we now know were not their loved ones.”

“These charges represent some of the most serious breaches of trust possible in the funeral industry,” said Laura Tams from the Crown Prosecution Service.