A needle-in-the-haystack DNA search is underway to identify at least 24 mummified bodies that were discovered in a secret room of a funeral home.
Brian Cotter, one of two brothers who co-own the Davis Mortuary in Pueblo, Colorado, also serves as Pueblo County’s longtime elected coroner.
He has yet to resign from that position despite widespread calls for him to do so and despite his admission that he let some of the bodies putrefy in his funeral home, unrefrigerated and unembalmed, for as long as 16 years.
Cotter also admitted that he may have given fake ashes to descendants’ next-of-kin while leaving their loved ones’ bodies to rot.
‘I’m lost, confused, furious, every emotion anyone could feel right now,’ said Annie Rahl, who entrusted Davis Mortuary with her uncle, Samuel Holgerson’s body on August 18, two days before state inspectors found the decaying remains, and wonders if it was among them.
Rahl is livid that neither Cotter, 64, nor his brother, Chris Cotter, 59, has been arrested or charged.
‘It kills me that they’re out there, walking free when I can assure you that if 20-something bodies were found wasting away in my home or office, I’d be behind bars in a minute.’
‘The whole community is disgusted,’ added Thomas Clementi, a locksmith for Pueblo County, told Daily Mail on Tuesday after being assigned to change the locks at the county coroner’s office – partly to keep Cotter out.
Brian Cotter (left) served the Pueblo community as the county’s longtime elected coroner, but both he and his brother Chris (right) are facing condemnation after authorities found 24 mummified corpses at their funeral home
The bodies were discovered in a hidden room at the brothers’ Davis Mortuary, where Brian Cotter admitted to giving families fake ashes while allowing their loved ones’ remains to decompose – some for as long as 16 years
The story of how the decomposed bodies were discovered stems partly from two similarly grisly cases at other Colorado funeral homes.
In October 2023, about 30 miles northwest of Pueblo in the town of Penrose, officers responding to neighbors’ complaints about a foul emanating from the Return to Nature Funeral Home found 190 corpses inside the building in what an arrest affidavit described as ‘abhorrent’ conditions.
The bodies of adults and infants who had died between 2019 and 2020 ‘were located stacked on top of each other and some were not in body bags,’ according to the affidavit for the arrests of Return to Nature co-owners Jon and Carie Hallford.
Investigators also found maggots throughout the building, as well as bodily fluids several inches deep on the floor.
The Hallfords both pleaded guilty to abuse of a corpse, forgery and money laundering, and have been sentenced to 20 and up to 15 years in prison, respectively.
A year before that discovery in Penrose, the daughter and mother funeral directors both pleaded guilty in 2022 to selling human body parts and delivering fake ashes to families out of their Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose, Colorado. Megan Hess and Shirley Koch were sentenced, respectively, to 20 and 15 years in prison.
Both cases prompted lawmakers in Colorado, which had some of the weakest oversight of funeral homes in the US, to pass three laws last year to regulate the state’s funeral industry.
Under those new measures, the state is inspecting mortuaries for the first time since the early 1980s.
Pueblo resident Thomas Clementi, who works as a locksmith was ordered on Tuesday to change the locks at the County Coroner’s Office where Brian works out of, partly to keep him out
This isn’t Colorado’s first scandal involving mishandled bodies at funeral homes. In 2023, complaints from neighbors about a foul odor at Return to Nature Burial and Cremation led to the arrest of co-owners Jon and Carie Hallford, after authorities discovered dozens of decomposing bodies stacked on top of each other
In 2022, Megan Hess and her mother, Shirley Koch, pleaded guilty to selling human body parts and providing families with fake ashes from their Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose, Colorado. Hess was sentenced to 20 years in prison, while Koch received 15 years
When two state inspectors showed up at Davis Mortuary on Wednesday, August 20, they noted ‘a strong odor of decomposition,’ according to a state report written later that day.
They also noticed that a cardboard display was concealing a door in the funeral home. Brian Cotter removed the display, the document shows, but asked the inspectors not to enter the room it was hiding.
The inspectors went in anyway and ‘found several bodies in various stages of decomposition,’ the report reads.
‘Mr. Cotter stated that the bodies were awaiting cremation and admitted that some bodies had been in the room for approximately fifteen years’, it continues.
Cotter also admitted to the inspectors ‘that he may have issued next-of-kin fake cremains’.
State regulators shuttered Davis Mortuary immediately, writing that it ‘engaged in willfully dishonest conduct and/or committed negligence in the practice of embalming, funeral directing, or providing for final disposition that defrauds or causes injury or is likely to defraud or cause injury.’
Neither brother answered their doors when we knocked on Tuesday, hours after investigators executed search warrants on their homes.
Brian Cotter’s attorney told Daily Mail his client ‘anticipates a forthcoming resignation’.
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation, which is leading the criminal probe, has not said what, if anything, it found and the brothers so far have refused to speak with criminal investigators.
The Pueblo County Coroner’s office headquarters, which the county began leasing in 2022, remains unused for anything beyond administrative tasks under Coroner Brian Cotter’s leadership
Investigators executed search warrants at both brothers’ homes on Tuesday, but the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, which is leading the criminal probe, has not disclosed whether any evidence was found
The home of Chris Cotter which was also searched on Tuesday
The bureau has received more than 800 tips about Davis Mortuary and has asked people who entrusted their next-of-kin to it to fill out victim information questionnaires in hopes of figuring out if those bodies were among the corpses the Cotters mishandled.
Annie Rahl is among the 336 people who so far have done so.
Two sources familiar with the inspection and investigation say the mortuary’s records are so haphazard and incomplete that they are unlikely to be useful in identifying the bodies or in contacting family members.
Gerry Montgomery, who has worked with the brothers on cremation services since 2017, told the Daily Mail that it’s unclear why they would keep the bodies there, especially knowing that new state laws require inspections
Investigators instead will try to match genetic fingerprints from the corpses – most likely from bones because tissues have decayed so badly – to those of family members who come forward in an effort to ensure their loved ones’ remains were handled correctly.
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation has said that the genetic analysis and matching process could take months if not years.
The agency has not disclosed a theory about why the Cotter brothers would have defied professional – and moral – standards by stashing the bodies in a secret room rather than embalming, refrigerating, cremating, burying or entombing them.
Nor has it said why the Cotters would have kept the bodies in their mortuary, knowing that, under the new state laws, it would be inspected.
Members of the Colorado State Highway Patrol Hazmat team prepared to enter Davis Mortuary (pictured), where mishandled bodies were discovered, as approximately 336 people submitted victim information questionnaires to determine if their loved ones were among the remains
The small building, previously occupied by Merry Maids cleaning services, is where the Pueblo County Coroner’s office still handles bodies
‘That’s what mystifies us – if they knew they were gonna be inspected, why they let it fester to this point,’ said Gerry Montgomery, the director of a nearby funeral home that the Cotters have paid $300 to $500 – depending on a corpse’s weight – for cremation services since 2017.
Montgomery has known Brian Cotter for decades, describing him as ‘very personable, active with the Masonic Lodge and even grandmaster for his term.’ He notes that Cotter, as coroner, ‘was professional, efficient and prompt in getting death certificates signed.’
‘Up until now, I had the highest respect for him,’ he said. ‘Just knowing the brothers, it’s one of the things you’d never expect to happen. It’s just beyond words why it did, and we’re all just totally shocked.’
And Jimmy Brown, a funeral director and elected coroner in Kiowa County, 100 miles east of Pueblo, added: ‘Brian is one of the last people I would have ever, ever, ever suspected of being capable of this,’ added .
Kiowa County Coroner Jimmy Brown told Daily Mail that Cotter was ‘one of the last people I have ever, ever, ever suspected of being capabale of this’
As two sources familiar with the inspection shared with us, Davis Mortuary’s own crematorium had been installed in the 1970s but has been unusable for at least the past decade.
They said Brian Cotter told inspectors that most of the bodies stashed in the secret room came to his mortuary for cremation between 2009 and 2012 and that their next-of-kin wanted them cremated, but for various reasons did not want their ashes afterwards.
Both our sources – who asked that their names be withheld for fear of losing their jobs – speculated that the Cotters aimed to save money by not sending those bodies out to be cremated.
Both also said that families who didn’t want to take possession of ashes years ago may, at this point, be unlikely to make the effort to contact or give DNA samples to state investigators.
Colorado Governor Jared Polis is one of the outspoken polticial figures who have called for Cotter to step down from his position
Cotter, elected as county coroner in 2017, has refused to step down and is set to remain in the position until 2027 unless he chooses to resign
They both fear it could vastly lower the likelihood of identifying the corpses.
Meanwhile, Brian Cotter has ignored pleas from Colorado Governor Jared Polis and other elected officials for him to step down as Pueblo County’s coroner, a post to which he was elected in 2014 and is scheduled to hold until 2027.
‘I’m sickened for the families of the loved ones who are impacted by this unacceptable misconduct,’ Polis said in a statement Friday.
‘No one should ever have to wonder if their loved one is being taken care of with dignity and respect after they’ve passed, and Mr. Cotter must be held to account for his actions.’
County spokesperson Anthony Mestas said Tuesday that he ‘cannot comment’ as to whether there has been any indication of irregularities or misconduct under Cotter’s 11-year leadership at the coroner’s office.
Now a movement to have him recalled from the coroner’s post is underway.
The Colorado Coroner’s Association has removed Cotter from his position as secretary of its board.
This week, police tape surrounded Davis Mortuary, and local police secured the perimeter after crews removed 24 intact corpses, multiple containers of bones and multiple other containers of what investigators call ‘probable human tissue representing an unknown number of deceased individuals.’
The mortuary was founded in 1905 and bought in 1989 by the Cotters, whose father was in the funeral home business.
According to its website, the brothers ‘are able to serve their friends and neighbors from throughout the region with compassion, which is sometimes rare in the funeral business today’.
‘In this era of mega-size corporate funeral home chains, it is truly refreshing to find a family still here to serve you when you need it.’
This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .