Thirty-one families believed that their loved one had been cremated, when in fact they remained on site within the Legacy premises on Hessle Road
Fraudulent funeral director Robert Bush will be sentenced this week after pleading guilty to 67 offences spanning 12 years and affecting hundreds of victims.
The 48-year-old who ran Legacy Independent Funeral Directors gave grieving families the wrong ashes while their loved ones’ bodies were left at his site for months.
Police were contacted by someone with access to the site in March 2024, expressing concerns over “care of the deceased” at the Hull business.
When officers searched the premises, they found 31 bodies that should have been cremated months earlier, including a stillborn baby that had been there for almost two years.
They also found more than 100 sets of ashes, some with name labels and letters attached to the box.
Police found that many families of the deceased found at Legacy had already been given ashes by Bush, revealing a widespread practice of him giving grieving relatives the wrong ashes.
Investigators also learned that Bush had committed fraudulent trading in relation to funeral plans, where he would take payment for the plans but not pass any of the money on to the financial institutions who would hold it for when the funeral was required. He also stole from charities by failing to pass on donations collected at funerals.
In April, Bush pleaded guilty to 30 counts of preventing a lawful and decent burial, and theft from 12 charities including the Salvation Army and Macmillan Cancer Support.
He had already admitted 30 counts of fraud by false representation relating to bodies found at the site, and four “foetus allegations” of fraud, where he presented ashes to women falsely saying that they were “the remains of their unborn”.
Bush also pleaded guilty to 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.
The sentencing at Hull Crown Court is listed for five days, and is expected to hear from more than 100 victims.
Bush, formerly of Kirk Ella, East Yorkshire, but now of Otley, West Yorkshire, is on conditional bail.
Senior investigating officer Detective Superintendent Alan Curtis, of Humberside Police, had previously said: “The utter devastation and emotional harm Robert Bush has caused to hundreds of victims and families cannot be underestimated.
“Thirty-one families believed that their loved one had been cremated, when in fact they remained on site within the Legacy premises on Hessle Road. Most had been given ashes and had been advised that their loved ones’ cremation had taken place.
“Other families, who had chosen cremations through Legacy, were left waiting for ashes that have never been provided, or were deceived by Bush and given ashes that we now know were not their loved ones.
“The distress and devastation that this has caused for those families is simply unimaginable.
“People paid Bush for funeral plans, so in the future their families didn’t have to worry about costs and arrangements for their own funerals.
“He betrayed this trust, leaving some victims with the uncertainty around their own funeral arrangements and without the means to pay for them.
“The damage he has caused to families across our communities is quite possibly irreparable, with so many victims who have suffered and continue to do so.”