Cover Up:

For eight years, Megan Hess ran Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in the small town of Montrose, Colorado. She promised clients discounts on normally expensive cremations, a seeming kindness in a town where many are poor. But in the back of the funeral home, Megan’s elderly mother Shirley was actually dismembering the dead. And then Megan was selling the body parts – heads, torsos, legs – to companies that claim to do medical research. 

The families who trusted Megan –- they had no idea what she was really up to. When they came to pick up the ashes of their loved ones, they instead received a mixture of ashes of various people. They had no idea of their betrayal until some received a strange phonecall from the FBI.

Megan and Shirley were body brokers, trading on a dark network where people buy and sell bodies. What exactly were the two women after? Who was really buying those stolen bodies, and why? 

A Campside Media & Sony Music Entertainment production.

Credits

Cover Up: Body Brokers is a production of Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment, in association with Black Bar Mitzvah.

Host: Ashley Fantz

Senior Producer: Elizabeth Van Brocklin

Associate Producers: Rachel Yang & Callie Hitchcock

Story Editors: Emily Martinez, Matt Shaer & Anthony Pucillo

Sound Design, Mixing & Original Music: Garrett Tiedemann

Field Producers: Megan Burney and Monique Laborde

Recording by: Jimmy Guthrie at Arcade 160 Studios in Atlanta

Fact Checking: Sara Ivry

For Campside Media:

Executive Producers: Josh Dean, Vanessa Grigoriadis, Adam Hoff, and Matt Shaer

Operations Team is Doug Slawin, Ashley Warren, Sabina Mara, Emma Simonoff, Destiny Dingle & David Eichler