Hull<\/a>, pleaded guilty to 67 offences spanning 12 years and affecting hundreds of families, including 30 counts of preventing a lawful and decent burial.<\/p>\nOver a five-day sentencing hearing at Hull crown court, more than 80 victims recounted their horror at learning their loved ones had been left \u201crotting away\u201d inside his funeral parlour. Many broke down sobbing during their statements.<\/p>\n
Sentencing Bush, the judge, Mr Justice Hilliard, said: \u201cThe defendant was so preoccupied with his own enrichment that he behaved in a shocking and disgraceful way towards the deceased.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe awful truth is that anyone whose loved one went through Legacy at any time when it was operating can now have no confidence as to how they were treated or whose ashes they have. Unless, of course, they were one of the 30 bodies recovered in March 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cCulpability is of course high because of the gross breach of trust in respect of people who were vulnerable as they were bereaved.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bush, 48, from Otley, West Yorkshire, showed little visible emotion while listening to the statements in the dock, but hung his head lower and lower as the week went on.<\/p>\n
A court artist drawing of Robert Bush appearing at Hull crown court for sentencing. Photograph: Elizabeth Cook\/PA<\/p>\n
Gasps and sobbing could be heard from the public gallery when prosecutors revealed the grim condition of the deceased.<\/p>\n
The court heard that bodies had been found uncovered and lying on racks in varying states of decomposition. Damp and mould had spread to the coffins and ash boxes, while dried body fluids and faeces had been left on the floor.<\/p>\n
During the search, PC Jason Sutcliffe spotted a brown paper bag on the floor. He initially thought the item inside was a baby bird, before noticing two hospital wristbands wrapped around the waist, identifying the body as the \u201cbaby of Jasmine Beverley\u201d.<\/p>\n
The baby, Sunny Beverley-Conlin, was miscarried at 18 weeks in May 2022. His parents believed he had been given a funeral and cremated. Instead, Bush had left his remains inside Legacy for almost two years.<\/p>\n
Police outside the Hessle Road branch in March 2024 after reports of \u2018concern for care of the deceased\u2019. Photograph: Danny Lawson\/PA<\/p>\n
Sunny\u2019s mother, Jasmine, sobbed as she faced Bush in court. \u201cI trusted Rob with the most precious and important person in my life,\u201d she said. \u201cThe reality I now live with is that my baby boy Sunny has spent more time in your possession than he ever did with his own family.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a statement, Sutcliffe described finding Sunny\u2019s remains as \u201cthe worst experience of my career\u201d and said it would \u201cnever leave my thoughts\u201d.<\/p>\n
The ashes presented to Beverley and her family had been \u201cconsistent with baby remains in volume but had larger pieces of coarse bones\u201d expected from an adult\u2019s body, according to evidence heard in court.<\/p>\n
Some of the ashes presented to Lucy Ness, who lost her child just before 12 weeks, were said to have resembled \u201canimal remains\u201d in terms of size and texture, which prompted cries in the courtroom.<\/p>\n
The body of 94-year-old Norman Bridger was recovered at the Legacy premises 323 days after his death. \u201cMy lovely dad lay in a cardboard coffin for almost 11 months,\u201d said his daughter Karen King \u201cIt\u2019s beyond belief. I\u2019ll never know why. It feels like he was just forgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bush was arrested on 10 March while returning from a holiday in Arizona, US, a \u00a33,000 trip funded by his funeral fraud. Arrest footage showed Humberside and Met police officers escorting a shocked Bush off a plane at Heathrow airport.<\/p>\n
Soon after his arrest, Bush told officers: \u201cI fucked it all up, everything, my whole world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bush was arrested while returning from a holiday in Arizona. Photograph: Humberside police\/PA<\/p>\n
Police officers found more than 35 bodies and more than 100 sets of ashes during a search of Legacy premises at Hessle Road in March 2024.<\/p>\n
Several families had had the wrong ashes turned into jewellery, and in one instance planned to incorporate some into a tattoo.<\/p>\n
David Gorbutt told the court he felt \u201cabused\u201d after learning that Bush had given him a stranger\u2019s ashes rather than those of his late wife, Susan Gorbutt. He had scattered those ashes at the same site as her son\u2019s, as per Susan\u2019s wishes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have had the uncertainty of not knowing who or what I have scattered over the ashes of Susan\u2019s son,\u201d Gorbutt said. \u201cWho was that? One person? More than one?\u201d<\/p>\n
The state of Bush\u2019s premises \u201cdid not meet industry standards\u201d and represented a \u201cwholly inadequate approach to care for the deceased\u201d, according to evidence from Dr Richard Lloyd, a human anatomy centre manager at the University of Cambridge and Cranfield University. \u201cBodies were simply abandoned in the Hessle Road mortuary for nature to take its course,\u201d his report stated.<\/p>\n
Containers of ashes were \u201cstored in an undignified manner\u201d across the premises, stacked \u201cchaotically on shelves\u201d or left on the floor, where \u201cdamp had caused mould to grow on the boxes\u201d. Ash was also found on desk surfaces and, in one room, strewn across the floor. Officers found jewellery that ought to have been returned to families and a large number of photographs that should have been placed inside coffins.<\/p>\n
Bush stole money from funeral services intended for 12 separate charities, including Macmillan Cancer Support, Salvation Army and a local hospice. In addition, he sold false funeral plans to 226 people over nearly 12 years, totalling in value to \u00a3562,117.<\/p>\n
In the time he spent defrauding bereaved families, Bush spent more than \u00a342,000 on holidays, including his trip to Arizona, \u00a321,000 on motorcycle racing and \u00a317,400 on home improvements between 2017 and 2024. He spent more than \u00a39,000 on camping expenses in 2022 \u2013 the same year he failed to cremate baby Sunny Beverley-Conlin.<\/p>\n
Bush\u2019s barrister, Richard Wright KC, said his client wished to apologise to the families and accepted this was \u201clikely to be rejected\u201d by them. Wright added: \u201cHe is treated, completely understandably, as a pariah \u2013 hated and despised.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A funeral director has been jailed for 20 years for leaving dozens of bodies \u2013 including a miscarried…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":720977,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-720976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720976","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=720976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/720977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=720976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=720976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}