A funeral director in the UK, who hoarded bodies for months and gave bereaved families the wrong ashes, has been jailed for 20 years.
For 12 years, Robert Bush breached the trust of his customers, at Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in Hull, "on an almost industrial scale" and "in a myriad of ways", from mixing up ashes to exploiting vulnerable pensioners with fake funeral plans.
Today, he was told by a judge that the 20-year prison term could not "put right the harm the defendant has done".
Mr Justice Hilliard said even people who had used Bush's services but were not directly involved with the case could not be sure they had been given their loved one’s ashes.
He said, "unless a body was one of those actually recovered by the police in 2024 and was properly identified, no one who had a cremation at Legacy at any time can actually know for certain whether they received the right ashes for their loved one, whether or not their case features on the indictment."
Mr Justice Hilliard went on to say Bush was "so pre-occupied with his own enrichment that he behaved in a shocking and disgraceful way towards the deceased entrusted to his care, and his behaviour towards their living relatives was characterised by dishonesty, deception and heartlessness".
Bush was motivated by "financial greed" and had a "heartless side to him too", while Legacy’s Hessle Road premises were "dreadful", the judge said.
"If he could re-use a coffin someone had already paid for, he would do so.
"If it was cheaper to keep someone in non-refrigerated conditions, he would do that too," he said.
The judge said what the dead lacked in dignity at the hands of Robert Bush "is more than made up for by the dignity with which the relatives have conducted themselves on their behalf in these proceedings".
Familes' not sure if they received the correct ashes
Over four days, statements from more than 200 victims were read out in court.
One woman who was given the wrong ashes for her husband told the defendant he had fooled people in Hull with his mild manner, when in fact he was a "cruel conman who used people’s grief to fund his lifestyle".
The court heard Bush’s offending came to light in March 2024 when he was on holiday with his daughter in Arizona and asked two directors of another funeral firm to help with a body recovery while he was away.
A casual worker at Legacy told the two men, "out of the blue", that bodies had been at the site "for years".
Police were called and searched the site, uncovering a "shocking" scene where decomposing bodies had been left on the racks of a cold storage area.
The court heard the rest of the site was in a "lamentable state", with ashes kept in mouldy, photographs left out of coffins and jewellery not returned to families.
The investigation found that 31 bodies, including that of an unborn baby, should have been cremated months earlier and that most of their families had already been given ashes.
Officers were able to identify another 57 families who had either been given the wrong ashes or no ashes, but the court heard there was also a large quantity of unlabelled ashes at the site and no-one who used Legacy during that time could ever know for sure if they had the right ones.
Several people recounted how they had jewellery made out of the ashes, only to find out they had been carrying around "a total stranger".
The details behind Bush’s widespread practice of giving out the wrong ashes are still largely unknown, he refused to answer questions about it when asked by police.
Detective Superintendent Al Curtis said there was evidence that he was mixing up ashes and using a communal store to give out to families when they asked for their loved ones back.
The court heard of several cases when Bush gave a client the wrong ashes but collected the right ones from the crematorium as little as two days later.
In his police interviews he said, "I’ve never given ashes back that weren’t ashes," but refused to go into any further detail.
He also said that all the ashes were human, although an urn given to a mother, was found to contain what are thought to be animal remains.
Four women were given the wrong ashes for their unborn babies.
In one police interview, Bush said he had developed a cash flow problem because "people did not always pay" and had debts of around £90,000.
He said his plan had been to generate more business and clear the backlog within two to three months, but had never managed to "catch up".
Despite his debts, the court heard that Bush was "profligate" in his personal spending and over seven years, while he was defrauding customers, he spent £42,000 on holidays and £21,000 on motorcycle racing.
The court heard that many of his customers were on limited budgets, with one woman describing how she had paid for her mother's funeral partly through an online fundraising page.
