Funeral Director Robert Bush Pleads Guilty to 30 Counts of Preventing Lawful Burial and Fraud

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A fraudulent funeral director who gave grieving families the wrong ashes while their loved ones’ bodies were left at his site for months has pleaded guilty to 30 counts of preventing a lawful burial.

Police found 35 bodies and more than 100 sets of ashes when they raided Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in Hull in March 2024.

Funeral director Robert Bush was charged with preventing a lawful and decent burial of more than 30 of the bodies, one of which had been there for a year.

Bush, 48, initially denied those offences at a court hearing last October, but on Thursday he changed his pleas and admitted the 30 charges.

He also pleaded guilty to theft from 12 charities, including the Salvation Army and Macmillan Cancer Support.

At October’s hearing, Bush admitted to 30 counts of fraud by false representation over the same 30 people.

He also pleaded guilty to four “foetus allegations” of fraud, where he presented ashes to women falsely saying that they were “the remains of their unborn”.

He admitted 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.

Before the hearing, affected families described Bush as “a monster” who “put us all through hell for his own selfishness”.

Police outside the Beckside branch of Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in Hull (PA Archive)

Karen Dry, who trusted Bush with her parents’ funerals in 2016 and 2018, has organised monthly vigils for victims since the investigation started in 2024.

She told the Press Association she would never be sure whether the ashes she was given by Bush were actually her parents, leaving the “heartbreaking” possibility that they might not be together in death as they wanted.

Mrs Dry said: “I’ve had people ringing me saying, ‘I had a tattoo done for my grandma, from her ashes’, and it turns out that the ashes that she’s now got tattooed are not her grandma’s.

“How do you come to terms with that? It’s so hard.

“And that’s just one example… It’s really shocking.”

She described Bush as “disgusting,” saying: “What a despicable human being he really turned out to be. He’s a monster.”

Michaela Baldwin, whose stepfather, Danny Middleton, was one of the bodies found at the site, months after he was supposed to have been cremated, said Bush had “put us all through hell for his own selfishness”.

She told the Press Association: “We put our trust and faith in these people to respect him and do things properly,

“People say it’s just a body – that body represents that person’s life and what they’ve done in their life.

“We trust these people to do that with respect.

“It’s just pure and utter greed.”

Tristan Essex’s grandmother, Jessie Stockdale, was identified through DNA after her body was also found at the funeral home.

He said Bush “genuinely seemed like he cared”, and the family went back to the premises several times after they were told Ms Stockdale had been cremated.

“We’d been in there a few times afterwards to get the ashes transferred, and the whole time my grandma was there in the back, just rotting,” Mr Essex said.

Bush, formerly of Kirk Ella, East Yorkshire, but now of Otley, West Yorkshire, had been due to go on trial in October.

Humberside Police launched an investigation into his business after a report of “concern for care of the deceased” in March 2024.

A month after the investigation started, the force said it had received more than 2,000 calls on a dedicated phone line from families concerned about their loved ones’ ashes.