{"id":508897,"date":"2026-04-02T12:30:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T12:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/508897\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T12:30:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T12:30:08","slug":"man-pleads-guilty-to-preventing-lawful-burial-regarding-30-bodies-at-hull-funeral-home-hull","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/508897\/","title":{"rendered":"Man pleads guilty to preventing lawful burial regarding 30 bodies at Hull funeral home | Hull"},"content":{"rendered":"

A fraudulent funeral director has admitted giving families the wrong ashes, lying to them, stealing from them and also stealing from charities while he was \u201ctrusted by people at a time they needed him most\u201d.<\/p>\n

Robert Bush pleaded guilty to preventing a lawful burial after 30 bodies and a quantity of ashes were found at a funeral home in Hull<\/a> in 2024, in a case that shocked an entire city.<\/p>\n

Bush, 48, had previously admitted to dozens of counts of fraud at a hearing in October, after police raided the premises of Legacy funeral home on Hessle Road over concern for care of the dead.<\/p>\n

He was charged with 67 offences in total and pleaded guilty to the remaining charges at Hull crown court on Thursday.<\/p>\n

He also admitted to stealing from charities including the Salvation Army, Macmillan Cancer Support, the Dogs Trust, the RNLI and WISHH, a local hospital charity.<\/p>\n

Four of the charges related to \u201cfoetus allegations\u201d of fraud, where he presented ashes to women falsely saying that they were \u201cthe remains of their unborn\u201d.<\/p>\n

He 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.<\/p>\n

He was granted bail on the same conditions as he was previously under.
Accepting the defence\u2019s application for a pre-sentence report into the circumstances of the crimes, Mr Justice Hilliard said \u201ceverybody accepts a custodial sentence is inevitable in this case\u201d.<\/p>\n

As Bush left the courtroom, families followed him, shouting: \u201cYou must feel like the luckiest man alive. No apologies to the families. No \u2018sorries\u2019, no sadness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Outside the courtroom, one of the victims, Michaela Baldwin, whose stepfather\u2019s body was found in the funeral home after they had been given what they believed to be his ashes, said the two-year wait for justice had been \u201chorrible\u201d. She said she was thinking of her stepfather, Danny Middleton, when the charge was read out and when Bush said \u201cguilty\u201d in response.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Her stepfather] is finally getting the justice he deserves for being treated the way he was,\u201d she said. \u201cFor us, to finally hear \u2018guilty\u2019 is what we were wanting but for him to be granted bail and walk out of here was a kick in the teeth.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said the families had been in agony while the defendant \u201cstretched it out\u201d by not pleading guilty. \u201cWe had to sit there with our families at Christmas with this hanging over, while he\u2019s [initially pleaded guilty] so he can spend Christmas with his family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baldwin said her family had now received the correct ashes, insuring they had the certification, and some family members planned to have jewellery made or have them tattooed. \u201cLuckily they hadn\u2019t done anything with the other ashes,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Bush has so far made no apology to the families involved \u2013 though it would not help, Baldwin said. \u201cHe won\u2019t say sorry and it wouldn\u2019t mean nowt anyway,\u201d she said. \u201cHe did it because of pure greed, just wanting the money. It\u2019s sickening.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said the families of the 29 people whose bodies were found there, plus others who did not know if they had received the right ashes, were \u201cup and down\u201d. \u201cWe all want him put away and we all want it done with,\u201d she said, adding that she had not been sleeping in the run-up to the hearing.<\/p>\n

Karen Dry, whose parents, Betty and Allan Griffin, both had funerals with Bush, called for the government to \u201cpay attention to this case\u201d.<\/p>\n

Underlining calls for tighter regulation of the funeral industry<\/a>, she said it was likely there were other cases like Bush going undetected.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s got to stop. If we\u2019ve got a Frankenstein funeral director on Hessle Road there\u2019s probably one in every city,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

A sentencing hearing was scheduled for 27 July and is expected to last at least two days. The court was told there would be between 200 and 240 victim impact statements in the case, such was the scale of the crimes.<\/p>\n

The senior investigating officer, Det Supt Alan Curtis from Humberside police, said Bush was \u201ctrusted by people at a time they needed him most\u201d and that \u201che exploited them\u201d.<\/p>\n

Curtis said: \u201cThe utter devastation and emotional harm Robert Bush has caused to hundreds of victims and families cannot be underestimated. They trusted he would look after those who meant the most to them, and that he would treat their loved ones with dignity, respect and in accordance with their wishes. This did not happen.<\/p>\n

The distress and devastation that this has caused for those families is simply unimaginable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Laura Tams, the deputy chief crown prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service, said: \u201cThese charges represent some of the most serious breaches of trust possible in the funeral industry. They include preventing the lawful and decent burial of bodies, defrauding families who paid for services never provided, returning wrong ashes to grieving relatives, fraudulent trading of funeral plans, and the theft of charitable donations made in memory of the deceased.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe impact on the families and wider community has been profound. At their most vulnerable time, when seeking dignity and closure for their loved ones, these families were subjected to appalling violations of trust.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to take this opportunity to share my deepest condolences to all those who have been affected. Learning that their relatives\u2019 remains had not received proper care, and that some received the wrong ashes, has caused immeasurable additional grief and trauma.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ashes recovered from the premises cannot be identified and there are many families who will never know whether the remains they received belonged to their loved ones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A fraudulent funeral director has admitted giving families the wrong ashes, lying to them, stealing from them and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":508898,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-508897","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}