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Colorado governor to sign bills regulating funeral homes after discovery of 190 rotting bodies

Posted on by darion

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is scheduled to sign two bills Friday morning that would change the state’s oversight of the funeral home industry after a series of gruesome discoveries, including 190 decomposing bodies at the facility, the sending of artificial ashes to families and the unauthorized sale of body parts.

The cases have brought to light Colorado’s lax funeral home regulations – some of the weakest in the country – and devastated hundreds of already grieving families. Some ceremonially scattered ashes, which turned out to be fake. Others said they had nightmares about what their dying loved ones might have looked like.

The proposals bring Colorado closer to most other states.

One requires regulators to routinely inspect funeral homes and give them greater enforcement powers. Another is implementing licensing for funeral directors and others in the industry. These qualifications include a background check, degrees in mortuary science, passing a state examination, and work experience.

Previously, funeral home directors in Colorado were not required to complete high school, let alone obtain a diploma.

The funeral home industry generally agreed with the changes, although some feared that the stringent requirements for funeral home directors were unnecessary and made it difficult to find job candidates.

The signing of the bills comes after a difficult year for funeral homes in Colorado.

In early October, neighbors noticed a putrid odor coming from a building in the town of Penrose, about two hours south of Denver. Authorities soon found 190 decomposing bodies there, including adults, infants and fetuses.

Some were stacked on top of each other, the floor was covered with a liquid of decomposition, and the inside was swarming with flies and maggots. Nearly two dozen bodies were from 2019, and about 60 more were from 2020. Once the bodies were identified, families who received the ashes quickly learned the cremations were not their loved ones.

In most states, funeral homes are routinely inspected, but Colorado had no such rules. The owners of the funeral home were arrested in November and faced hundreds of charges of abuse of corpses and other charges.

Just a few months later, in February, a woman’s body was found in the back of a hearse after being left there for more than a year by a suburban Denver funeral home. The discoveries included at least 30 cremated remains of people hidden in the funeral director’s home.

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Bedayn is a corps member of the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.