DENVER — Colorado authorities said Thursday they are investigating a funeral home operated by a county coroner where inspectors found several decomposing bodies.
The bodies were found this week in a room behind a door that was hidden by a cardboard display during an inspection of Davis Mortuary in Pueblo on Wednesday after Brian Cotter, an owner and the county coroner, asked them not to go inside the room, according to a document from state regulators. The inspectors found a “strong odor of decomposition,” it said.
Cotter told inspectors that some of the bodies had been awaiting cremation for about 15 years and that he may have given fake cremated remains to family members, according to the document, which explained why the mortuary’s license was suspended.
Colorado for years had some of the weakest rules for funeral homes in the nation with no routine inspections or qualification requirements for funeral home operators. That allowed numerous abuses, including a pending case involving nearly 200 decomposing bodies that were found being stored at room temperature in a building in Penrose, Colorado, about 30 miles from Pueblo.
A sentencing of one of the funeral homes owners in that case on charges of corpse abuse is set for Friday.
Cotter and his brother bought Davis Mortuary in 1989, according to the business’s website. It said the brothers brought with them an “old school” way of operating that they learned from their father, who owned and operated funeral homes in Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska.
A woman who answered the phone at the mortuary said it had no comment and declined to make Cotter available for an interview.
Cotter did not immediately respond to a message left with the Coroner’s office.
Officials from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, Pueblo police, the Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office and the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies plan to hold a press conference about the criminal investigation Thursday afternoon.
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Brown reported from Billings, Montana.
