They have been arranged with precision and care. Shoulders straightened, arms smoothed, a respectful amount of space between each ‘figure’ allowing air to circulate and cleanliness to be maintained. The meticulous presentation suggests a level of deliberateness, even dignity, in the handling.

Which makes the photograph all the more grotesque. Because this image – of shiny motorcycle leathers hanging on their designated hooks, helmets neatly atop each outfit, lending them a human air – was taken in the same Hull funeral home where, just yards away, actual human bodies had been dumped unceremoniously and left to rot.

What was recorded in those Yorkshire premises was beyond comprehension.

When the crime scene investigators’ counting was over, 35 bodies – entrusted to Legacy Independent Funeral Directors staff by loving families – were found, in various stages of decomposition. One hundred sets of human ashes were bagged up; some had been on the dirty floor for so long the containers they were in had become mouldy and damp.

That floor, unpassable in some places, also contained human excrement and bodily fluids, as well as belongings from the deceased, and copious paperwork. The stench, due in part to the fact that the home’s 40ft fridge had broken, was overpowering.

One brown paper bag contained what at first seemed to be the remains of a tiny bird but was actually a stillborn baby boy.

Little Sunny Beverley-Conlin, identified from the hospital tag which was still in place, had been there almost two years; his parents are still unsure whose ashes they received. They will never recover. Ditto the police officers deployed to the case, one of whom described the investigation as ‘probably the worst experience of my career’.

What sort of human being could do something so callous to members of his own community?

Disgraced funeral director Robert Bush dumped human bodies unceremoniously in his home and left them to rot

The Yorkshire premises was incredibly untidy - the floor contained human excrement and bodily fluids, as well as belongings from the deceased, and copious paperwork

However, while bodies were left to rot, Bush's motorcycle leathers were kept in pristine condition

The owner of both the motorcycle leathers and the funeral home, disgraced funeral director Robert Bush, 48, was yesterday jailed for 20 years, with judge Mr Justice Hilliard saying he was ‘heartless’ and ‘driven by financial greed.’

Describing the scene at Legacy as ‘appalling’, he said: ‘I don’t think I have ever known offences affect so many people and so many people so deeply.’

At Hull Crown Court, Bush admitted 67 offences, including failing to bury and cremate people. He also stole money entrusted to him for charity donations and defrauded clients who had bought funeral plans.

Almost as shocking as his crimes, which the jury heard were on an ‘almost industrial scale’, was his reaction when he was arrested in 2024. Apprehended on his return from a holiday to Arizona with his daughter Saskya – also a motorcycle aficionado, and an employee at Legacy – he appeared incredulous at being held at gunpoint. ‘I’m not Che Guevara,’ he said, referencing the Marxist revolutionary. ‘I’m not complicated.’

Most would disagree there. For a mind to have even contemplated such crimes must surely be not only complicated but warped and certainly devoid of any decency.

The only glimpse Bush’s defence team offered into the psyche of a man likened to the funeral industry’s equivalent of Harold Shipman was to suggest that ‘greed, incompetence, the passage of time, an inability to keep up with his own failings’, had played a part in his downfall and rightfully seen him reduced to a ‘pariah’.

At the very least, it takes a twisted mind to consider it normal to store motorbikes in a funeral home. It now seems clear that Bush’s expensive hobby – superbikes can cost £250,000 each year to run – was funded by the poor families who trusted him.

No expense was spared for his bikes; they were cared for like family members, buffed and polished before he posed proudly alongside them on social media – in images deleted after his arrest.

Family members of the dead stand outside court, where Bush was jailed for 20 years for 67 offences

‘There is no garden at the back of the house,’ one neighbour told us, with a nod at the now empty family home in the quiet Hull suburb of Kirk Ella, where Rob Bush lived with his family for a decade. ‘They built out at the back to store all the equipment and the bike parts. They took it all very seriously. ’

Bush has two daughters. Saskya graduated with a degree in engineering before joining the family funeral firm. ‘She was embalming from when she was about 14,’ one neighbour told the Daily Mail.

Her sister Lucia was just 17 when their father was arrested, and had just passed her driving test. ‘You’d see the girls go up and down the street on trial bikes. If they went away for a weekend, it would be to a motorcycle thing.’

On paper, Rob Bush must have seemed like a stalwart of the community. Although born in Bridlington, East Yorkshire, he built his family life in Kirk Ella.

The detached house looks a little derelict now, with overgrown gardens and a security camera (apparently installed by police) in place, but it is situated around the corner from St Andrews Primary School where Bush’s wife Vicky had been a teacher until she took early retirement at 53.

‘A lovely woman, well respected,’ another neighbour told us. ‘She’d been to Cambridge University and studied education. The girls were very bright. I taught Saskya.’

Kirk Ella is a tranquil place. Most of the inhabitants on the street are elderly. Several told us this week the girls would deliver gifts at Easter and Christmas. Maybe it was to head off complaints about the noise, one quipped. Several locals thought they were possibly religious, certainly teetotal.

‘I invited them for some wine once, but Vicky said they only drank home-made lemonade,’ said one. ‘They didn’t really socialise or have visitors – except for both sets of parents. They had planned to have Vicky’s mother move in with them, but she died before that happened.’

This neighbour remembered a low-key funeral, refreshments served at home. ‘They had a really nice do for that,’ she reflected. ‘While other people were rotting.’

Why, one wonders, would a man with such scant regard for the dead or their grieving families be drawn to such an industry? One funeral celebrant who came to regret ever meeting Rob told us he first came across him about 15 years ago when Rob – ebullient, enthusiastic, a little cocky – pitched up at a funeral industry networking do.

Despite his lack of experience at this stage, Bush presented as something of a know-it-all. ‘To say he knew little about this profession is an understatement, but he tried to give the impression he was an expert.’

This celebrant ended up working professionally with Bush, doing ‘three or more funerals for him’. It was not a happy experience. While outwardly Bush seemed empathetic and caring – ‘every sentence ended with “bless you”,’ one victim recalled – he was duplicitous.

‘About a year before all this broke, he asked me to conduct a funeral and it was for a former colleague of mine. He said the family had asked for me. I took the job and I spoke to the client and asked what prompted them to ask for me and they said they hadn’t. They said they’d been offered my services by Bush.

‘I thought that was strange at the time. Later, it hit me. I discovered other celebrants had refused to work with him – hence him coming to me.’

Soon after, this celebrant discovered why Bush – who by then had three funeral homes – was regarded as toxic in the industry. It is normal for funeral directors to pay the fee for a celebrant – usually around £200 – up front, or at least very quickly. Bush didn’t adhere to this.

‘After a week I contacted him and said, “You’ve not paid, Robert, it’s been a week.” He said, “I’ll pay it today” but he didn’t,’ the celebrant explained. ‘I sent another message when he didn’t pay it the next day and he said: “The banks are updating their computer systems, I’ll pay it today.”

‘He didn’t pay it, so I sent him a third message at 8am the following day saying, “If you don’t pay by bank transfer or BACS I will contact the family directly and tell them you’re refusing to pay me”. He sent a text saying, “It’s been paid. Don’t ever threaten me again”.’

In truth, Bush’s financial affairs were as rotten as the premises he kept. Prosecutor Steven Ball said that between March 2017 and his arrest in 2024, £1.49 million was transferred to Bush’s private bank account from the Legacy business accounts. The total received in his business and personal accounts over this period was more than £3 million. The turnover reported to Companies House and HMRC did not reflect this, however.

We now know he was pocketing money given by mourners as charity donations. Legacy also received around £500,000 from people setting up funeral plans. Vicar Christina Minett-Stevens, who worked with Bush, said she felt sick after discovering he’d ‘lied to my face’ and taken £3,000 from her, towards her own funeral plan.

Several industry insiders told us that Bush had become an embarrassment within the industry, on occasions appearing to arrange his own flowers and print orders of service on the flimsiest paper instead of traditional card.

He started to make his own coffins too, putting a positive spin on his handcrafted designs for clients. In reality, they were akin to flat-pack tat. Another celebrant said that at least one family had been turned away from a crematorium because of a sub-standard coffin.

One of the most concerning aspects of this whole debacle is that it’s exposed how unregulated the funeral industry is. As Mr Justice Hilliard noted, just a single visit ‘might have been enough to bring what he was doing to a halt.’

In fact, it was shockingly easy for Bush to operate a cowboy operation behind the doors of his now notorious headquarters in Hull’s Hessle Road. His crimes were only discovered in 2024 because, while he was on holiday, two men from another funeral firm were helping out with the transport of a body.

The rival workers asked to look inside Legacy’s premises while Bush was away and were so horrified they not only called the police but ran outside to flag down a passing patrol car.

What’s disturbing is that similar questions were asked by police about a previous funeral business – unrelated to Robert Bush – which was based in the same Hessle Road premises.

This one was run by a flamboyant Simon Woolston, who ran cut-price funeral operations called Heavenly Services and Dignitass.

Heavenly Services had gone into liquidation, and police had received 370 complaints about non-existent burial and pre-paid funeral plans. The investigation was ended, however, with Woolston’s sudden death in October 2021.

It seems extraordinary that the person who took over these premises – Robert Bush – would also be at the centre of a police investigation, but Humberside Police have said the two matters are ‘unconnected’. Our enquiries have revealed a curious timeline, however. Although Heavenly Services ceased trading in October 2021, as early as November, local newspapers were reporting that a new owner was taking over ‘soon’.

By December, Legacy branding appeared on the building and opened in January 2022. A source has claimed that Bush not only inherited the massive 40ft fridge installed by Heavenly (capable of holding 50 bodies), but lockers filled with ashes that had never been returned to families.

It’s been suggested Bush said he would make sure the ashes got to their rightful owners. Does this explain the surplus of ashes, which would have allowed Bush to avoid paying fees to crematoria to dispose of bodies – and yet still have ashes to return to his customers?

It’s telling that although many people who’d had personal dealings with Bush were prepared to talk to us, all spoke this week on condition of anonymity, not wanting their own businesses tainted by association.

From Bush’s family: silence. Although Saskya was part of the investigation, no charges were brought against her. Nor against Vicky, who is believed to have stood by her husband.

One person historically close to the family insisted that although she hasn’t seen the Bushes for five years, there were no psychological problems. ‘There’s nothing wrong with Robert at all. We’re baffled,’ she said. She stressed the resilience – and respectability – of the family, saying they were ‘all very clever’.

And yet, a monster did emerge, and it is other families that have had to pick up the pieces.

More than 200 attended court this week, many reading their heartbreaking victim impact statements in person. Some have had to collect ashes, arrange second funerals; others will never know if the ashes they scattered were theirs.

As Bush begins his prison term, his victims, appalled by the leniency of a sentence that could see him free in 10 years, will be serving theirs for the rest of their lives.

Additional reporting: Mark Branagan and Stephanie Condron