Watch live as disgraced funeral director Robert Bush is to learn his fate after a five-day sentencing hearing in which more than 200 victims described the devastating impact of his crimes.
Bush, 48, is to be sentenced at Hull Crown Court for 67 offences spanning 12 years and affecting hundreds of victims at his business, Legacy Independent Funeral Directors.
A court has heard how he breached the trust placed in him by grieving families “on an almost industrial scale”, by keeping bodies for months after they should have been cremated, giving out the wrong ashes, taking money for funeral plans without making any of the arrangements, and stealing charity donations collected at services.
When officers searched the premises, they found 31 bodies that should have been cremated months earlier, including a stillborn baby that had been there for almost two years.
In April, Bush pleaded guilty to 30 counts of preventing a lawful and decent burial, and theft from 12 charities including the Salvation Army and Macmillan Cancer Support.
He had already admitted 30 counts of fraud by false representation relating to bodies found at the site, and four “foetus allegations” of fraud, where he presented ashes to women falsely saying that they were “the remains of their unborn”.
Bush also pleaded guilty to 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.