A funeral director has been jailed for 20 years for leaving dozens of bodies – including a miscarried baby – “rotting” in his mortuary and giving bereaved families the wrong ashes.
Robert Bush, the owner of Legacy Independent Funeral Services in Hull, pleaded guilty to 67 offences spanning 12 years and affecting hundreds of families, including 30 counts of preventing a lawful and decent burial.
After Bush’s sentencing, the government said it planned to crack down on “rogue operators” in the funeral industry, including by developing proposals for formal regulation of the sector.
The health secretary, Yvette Cooper, said Bush’s actions “were utterly abhorrent and my thoughts are with all the bereaved families in Hull who have been so badly let down”.
Over a five-day sentencing hearing at Hull crown court, more than 80 victims recounted their horror at learning their loved ones had been left “rotting away” inside his funeral parlour. Many broke down sobbing during their statements.
Sentencing Bush, the judge, Mr Justice Hilliard, said: “The defendant was so preoccupied with his own enrichment that he behaved in a shocking and disgraceful way towards the deceased.
“The awful truth is that anyone whose loved one went through Legacy at any time when it was operating can now have no confidence as to how they were treated or whose ashes they have. Unless, of course, they were one of the 30 bodies recovered in March 2024.
“Culpability is of course high because of the gross breach of trust in respect of people who were vulnerable as they were bereaved.”
Bush, 48, from Otley, West Yorkshire, showed little visible emotion while listening to the statements in the dock, but hung his head lower and lower as the week went on.
Gasps and sobbing could be heard from the public gallery when prosecutors revealed the grim condition of the deceased.
The court heard that bodies had been found uncovered and lying on racks in varying states of decomposition. Damp and mould had spread to the coffins and ash boxes, while dried body fluids and faeces had been left on the floor.
During the search, PC Jason Sutcliffe spotted a brown paper bag on the floor. He initially thought the item inside was a baby bird, before noticing two hospital wristbands wrapped around the waist, identifying the body as the “baby of Jasmine Beverley”.
The baby, Sunny Beverley-Conlin, was miscarried at 18 weeks in May 2022. His parents believed he had been given a funeral and cremated. Instead, Bush had left his remains inside Legacy for almost two years.
Sunny’s mother, Jasmine, sobbed as she faced Bush in court. “I trusted Rob with the most precious and important person in my life,” she said. “The reality I now live with is that my baby boy Sunny has spent more time in your possession than he ever did with his own family.”
In a statement, Sutcliffe described finding Sunny’s remains as “the worst experience of my career” and said it would “never leave my thoughts”.
The ashes presented to Beverley and her family had been “consistent with baby remains in volume but had larger pieces of coarse bones” expected from an adult’s body, according to evidence heard in court.
Some of the ashes presented to Lucy Ness, who lost her child just before 12 weeks, were said to have resembled “animal remains” in terms of size and texture, which prompted cries in the courtroom.
The body of 94-year-old Norman Bridger was recovered at the Legacy premises 323 days after his death. “My lovely dad lay in a cardboard coffin for almost 11 months,” said his daughter Karen King. “It’s beyond belief. I’ll never know why. It feels like he was just forgotten.”
Bush was arrested on 10 March while returning from a holiday in Arizona, US, a £3,000 trip funded by his funeral fraud. Arrest footage showed Humberside and Met police officers escorting a shocked Bush off a plane at Heathrow airport.
Soon after his arrest, Bush told officers: “I fucked it all up, everything, my whole world.”
Police officers found 35 bodies and more than 100 sets of ashes during a search of Legacy premises at Hessle Road in March 2024.
Several families had had the wrong ashes turned into jewellery, and in one instance planned to incorporate some into a tattoo.
David Gorbutt told the court he felt “abused” after learning that Bush had given him a stranger’s ashes rather than those of his late wife, Susan Gorbutt. He had scattered those ashes at the same site as her son’s, as per Susan’s wishes.
“I have had the uncertainty of not knowing who or what I have scattered over the ashes of Susan’s son,” Gorbutt said. “Who was that? One person? More than one?”
The state of Bush’s premises “did not meet industry standards” and represented a “wholly inadequate approach to care for the deceased”, according to evidence from Dr Richard Lloyd, a human anatomy centre manager at the University of Cambridge and Cranfield University. “Bodies were simply abandoned in the Hessle Road mortuary for nature to take its course,” his report stated.
Containers of ashes were “stored in an undignified manner” across the premises, stacked “chaotically on shelves” or left on the floor, where “damp had caused mould to grow on the boxes”. Ash was also found on desk surfaces and, in one room, strewn across the floor. Officers found jewellery that ought to have been returned to families and a large number of photographs that should have been placed inside coffins.
Bush stole money from funeral services intended for 12 separate charities, including Macmillan Cancer Support, Salvation Army and a local hospice. In addition, he sold false funeral plans to 226 people over nearly 12 years, totalling in value £562,117.
In the time he spent defrauding bereaved families, Bush spent more than £42,000 on holidays, including his trip to Arizona, £21,000 on motorcycle racing and £17,400 on home improvements between 2017 and 2024. He spent more than £9,000 on camping expenses in 2022 – the same year he failed to cremate baby Sunny.
Bush’s barrister, Richard Wright KC, said his client wished to apologise to the families and accepted this was “likely to be rejected” by them. Wright added: “He is treated, completely understandably, as a pariah – hated and despised.”
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