Funeral director admits preventing dozens of burials and stealing donations from mourners

A crooked funeral director who gave grieving families the wrong ashes while loved ones’ bodies were left at his site for months has pleaded guilty to 30 charges of obstructing a lawful funeral.

When police raided Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in Hull in March 2024, they found 35 bodies and more than 100 ashes.

Funeral director Robert Bush was accused of preventing the legal and proper burial of more than 30 bodies, one of which had been there for a year.

Bush, 48, initially denied those charges at a hearing last October, but changed his plea Thursday and pleaded guilty to 30 charges.

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

At the hearing in October, Bush admitted to 30 counts of fraud by false representation on the same 30 people.

He also admitted to four “fetus claim” scams in which he falsely presented ashes to women by calling them “the remains of their unborn babies.”

He also pleaded guilty to one count of fraud involving the ashes of 57 people between 2017 and 2024, and one count of forgery involving funeral plans between 2012 and 2024.

Before the hearing, affected families described Bush as “a monster who put us all through hell because of his own selfishness.”

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

He told the Press Association he could never be sure whether the ashes Bush gave him were really his parents, leaving behind the “heartbreaking” possibility that they might not be together in death as they wished.

Ms Dry said: “I’ve had people call me and say ‘I got a tattoo of my grandmother’s ashes’ and now it turns out the ashes she got tattooed weren’t her grandmother’s.

“How can you accept this? It’s so hard.”

“And this is just one example… It’s truly shocking.”

He described Bush as “disgusting” and said: “What a despicable human being he truly has been revealed to be. He is a monster.”

Michaela Baldwin, whose stepfather Danny Middleton was one of the bodies found at the site months after the cremation, said Bush “put us all through hell because of his own selfishness.”

He told the Press Association: “We maintain our trust and confidence that these people will respect it and do their job properly.

“People say it’s just a body; that body represents that person’s life and what they’ve done in that life.

“We trust that these people will do this respectfully.

“This is just pure and utter greed.”

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

He said Bush “seemed to really care” and that the family had returned to the premises several times after being told Ms Stockdale had been cremated.

“We went down there a few times afterwards to have the ashes moved, and the whole time my grandmother was rotting in the back,” Mr. Essex said.

Bush, formerly of Kirk Ella, East Yorkshire, and now living in Otley, West Yorkshire, was expected to appear in court in October.

Humberside Police launched an investigation into his business in March 2024 following a report of “concern regarding the care of the deceased”.

A month after the investigation began, police said a special hotline had received more than 2,000 calls from families concerned about their loved ones’ ashes.