The remains of a stillborn baby lay in an envelope on the cold room floor of a Hull funeral home for almost two years – one of dozens of bodies discovered in a “horror scene” that has led to the sentencing of funeral director Robert Bush.
When police raided Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in March 2024 after a tip-off, they found bodies in varying states of decomposition, including a foetus in a paper bag that one sergeant initially thought was a baby bird. Prosecuting, Chris Paxton KC told Hull Crown Court that the officer opened the bag to find a white cotton pad, then a tiny item. “He suspected it was a human foetus,” Paxton said. Hospital ID bands around the baby’s waist identified him as ‘Baby of Jasmine Beverley’, born stillborn at about 18 weeks in May 2022.
“Stillborn baby's remains found in envelope at Hull funeral home among 29 bodies.”
Jasmine Beverley had believed her son, Sunny, was cremated after a funeral. Instead, police told her his remains were on the floor of the funeral home. “It was quite a distressing time to discover that what you thought had happened, hadn’t actually happened,” she said.
The scandal unravelled when Bush, away on holiday in Arizona in March 2024, failed to collect a body from a care home. Two fellow funeral directors and a man named Patrick Moore were called to help. Moore warned them: “You two don’t know the half of it, bodies have been there for years.” He counted 29 bodies and described the scene as “something from a horror scene”. The directors flagged down a passing police car.
Inside, officers found a large number of human bodies in a cold storage area, stored on racks, mostly uncovered and in various stages of decomposition. Some still wore hospital ID bracelets. Flowers and soft toys were scattered across the floor. Bush, arrested on his return flight, told officers: “I f* it all up, everything my whole world.”
Paxton said Bush “breached trust on an almost industrial scale” – selling funeral plans without authorisation, failing to carry out burials, providing families with the wrong ashes, and stealing charity donations. His crimes “impacted young and old alike across the community of Hull and beyond.”
Beverley said Bush appeared “lovely” but “had a lot of people fooled”. More than 18 months after families went to Westminster to demand tighter funeral industry regulations, she said: “I don’t understand why they’re dragging their heels on this.”
