‘Monster’ funeral director who kept bodies and gave families wrong ashes faces jail

A former funeral director who gave dozens of grieving families the wrong ashes – including four mums who lost their unborn children – is facing jail after pleading guilty to 30 offences.

Police found 35 bodies and more than 100 sets of ashes when they raided Legacy Independent Funeral Directors’ in Hull in March 2024.

Funeral director Robert Bush was charged with preventing a lawful and decent burial over 30 of the bodies – one of which had been there for a year.

Bush, 48, initially denied those offences at a court hearing last October, but on Thursday he changed his pleas and admitted the 30 charges.

Before the hearing, affected families described Bush as ‘a monster’ who ‘put us all through hell for his own selfishness’.

Tristan Essex’s grandmother Jessie Stockdale was identified through DNA after her body was found at the funeral home.

He said Bush ‘genuinely seemed like he cared’ and the family went back to the premises several times after they were told Ms Stockdale had been cremated.

‘We’d been in there a few times afterwards to get the ashes transferred and the whole time my grandma was there in the back, just rotting,’ Mr Essex said.

Bush also pleaded guilty to theft from 12 charities including the Salvation Army and Macmillan Cancer Support.

Bush stood in the glass-fronted dock at Hull Crown Court as the clerk spent 10 minutes reading out 31 charges.

Wearing dark grey three-piece suit with a white shirt and pink tie, he clasped his hands in front of him as he said ‘guilty’ to each in a quiet voice.

Families of some of those who died were in the packed court and they comforted each other as the names of their relatives were read out by the clerk as he listed the charges.

Flanked by one security guard, Bush only spoke to confirm his name, apart from entering his pleas.

Bush was bailed until his sentencing hearing on July 27, but warned by the judge, Mr Justice Hilliard, that a prison sentence was ‘inevitable’.

Prosecutor Chris Paxton KC said there would be about 240 victim impact statements provided before the sentencing hearing from people that had been affected by the case.

Mr Paxton said: ‘The fraudulent trading count relates to funeral plans involves over 150 individuals.’

Richard Wright KC, representing Bush, said: ‘He well understands that there is only one form of sentence in this case, and that will be a custodial sentence.’

At October’s hearing, Bush admitted 30 counts of fraud by false representation over the same 30 people.

He also pleaded guilty to four ‘foetus allegations’ of fraud, where he presented ashes to women falsely saying that they were ‘the remains of their unborn’.

Bush admitted a further charge of fraud covering the ashes of 57 people between 2017 and 2024, and one of fraudulent trading relating to funeral plans between 2012 and 2024.

Karen Dry, who trusted Bush with her parents’ funerals in 2016 and 2018, has organised monthly vigils for victims since the investigation started in 2024.

She said she would never be sure whether the ashes she was given by Bush were actually her parents, leaving the ‘heartbreaking’ possibility that they might not be together in death as they wanted.

Mrs Dry said: ‘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.

‘How do you come to terms with that? It’s so hard.

‘And that’s just one example… It’s really shocking.’

She described Bush as ‘disgusting’, saying: ‘What a despicable human being he really turned out to be. He’s a monster.’

Michaela Baldwin, whose stepfather Danny Middleton was one of the bodies found at the site, months after he was supposed to have been cremated, said Bush had ‘put us all through hell for his own selfishness’.

She said: ‘We put our trust and faith in these people to respect him and do things properly.

‘People say it’s just a body – that body represents that person’s life and what they’ve done in their life.

‘We trust these people to do that with respect.

‘It’s just pure and utter greed.’

Bush, formerly of Kirk Ella, East Yorkshire, but now of Otley, West Yorkshire, had been due to go on trial in October.

Humberside Police launched an investigation into his business after a report of ‘concern for care of the deceased’ in March 2024.

A month after the investigation started, the force said it had received more than 2,000 calls on a dedicated phone line from families concerned about their loved ones’ ashes.

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