Hull funeral director Robert Bush jailed 20 years for swapping ashes and failing to bury 35 bodies

Discovery of the bodies

In March 2024, while Robert Bush was on holiday in Arizona, a casual worker alerted other funeral directors about bodies stored for years at Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in Hull. Police raided the premises and found 35 bodies in varying stages of decomposition, only four of which should legally have been there. Among them was a stillborn baby wrapped in a brown paper bag; the family had been given the ashes of an adult. One naked body lay on a stretcher on the floor.

The scale of deception

Bush admitted 67 offences, including 30 counts of preventing lawful and decent burial, theft from 12 charities, fraud by false representation, and fraudulent trading over nearly 12 years. In 46 cases families received ashes that were not their relatives'; 11 families never received any remains at all. The funeral director had kept over 100 urns on site. He also stole money donated in memory of the dead, totalling £500,000 from 200 families, and defrauded another 172 customers of £562,000, partly through fake funeral plans that were never honoured.

If Robert Bush could reuse a coffin already paid for, he did. If it was cheaper to keep a body unrefrigerated, he did that too.

Sentencing and judge's remarks

At Hull Crown Court on 31 July 2026, Judge Nicholas Hilliard sentenced Bush to 20 years imprisonment, describing the pain caused as "beyond comprehension". He said the offences had affected a vast number of people deeply.

I don't think that I have ever known offences affect so many people and so many people so deeply.

Bush will be eligible for parole after serving half his sentence, a prospect that some victims criticised as too lenient. One relative told the BBC they felt "really, really let down" and that no prison term "could ever be enough".

The police investigation

Humberside Police described the case as the most complex in the force's history. Officers seized 3,000 exhibits, gathered 12,000 documents, and took 800 witness statements. Superintendent Al Curtis said the company had a polished public face but chaos behind the scenes. Bush was heavily in debt and treated the deceased with a questionable moral compass.

The suffering of families is unimaginable.

The impact on the community, Curtis added, extended far beyond the 300 victims identified by police. Bush was arrested at Heathrow airport returning from Arizona.