A funeral director who failed to bury or cremate people and gave bereaved relatives the ashes of strangers has been jailed for 20 years.
Some 35 bodies and more than 100 sets of ashes were found by police raiding Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in Hull in March 2024.
Robert Bush admitted 67 offences, including denying 30 people a decent and proper burial, theft from 12 charities, and fraudulent trading over a period of 12 years.
Sentencing him at Hull Crown Court, Judge Justice Hilliard told the former undertaker he had “caused anguish and pain on a scale beyond comprehension”.
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The court heard Bush defrauded nearly 200 families out of £500,000 and had acted out of “financial greed”.
Hilliard warned that unless a body was one of those recovered by police in 2024 and properly identified, no-one who had used Legacy’s cremations services “at any time can be absolutely certain they received the ashes of their loved one”.
“He must have a heartless side to him – which allowed him to treat the living and the dead in the way he did, and he was very confident he would get away with what he was doing.”
The judge added: “I don’t think I have ever known offences affecting so many people and so deeply.”
