Karen Dry has no idea if the ashes she is holding belong to her parents after becoming victim to Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in Hull. Families are calling for tougher regulations, saying it is easier to open a funeral directors than a sandwich shop
A daughter who is unsure if she has her mum and dads’ ashes has warned ‘Frankenstein’ funeral directors could be operating all over the UK.
Karen Dry, 57, is now planning to write to Robert Bush – who she expects to be jailed – and request a prison visit to ask him ‘why?’. “He’s Frankenstein, he’s a monster, but I need to ask him why?” she told The Mirror. On Thursday morning, the 48-year-old dad from Hull, pleaded guilty at the city’s crown court, to 30 counts of preventing the lawful and decent burial of a body at Legacy Independent Funeral Directors. He also admitted one charge of theft from 12 charities including the Salvation Army and Macmillan Cancer Support.
Mum of two Karen, from Cottingham in Hull, is fighting for tough regulations to be slapped on the funeral industry, as currently anyone could set up business looking after the dead. There are just two trade bodies for the industry but funeral directors do not need to register with them or face inspections.
She is warning that this lack of regulation means there could be “many more Frankenstein funeral directors out there.”
“If we’ve got a Frankenstein funeral director here in Hull, how many more are there that still have not been identified? There’ll definitely be more than just this one in this country. There’s probably more Frankensteins elsewhere – hiding in plain sight
“I think we need a vote on legislation to hold funeral directors criminally responsible for their businesses 100%. Until that happens, nobody is safe in death. Following codes of conduct isn’t good enough.”
Police found 35 bodies in Bush’s premises on Hessle Road in Hull in total but the crown prosecution gave the go ahead for 30 to be linked to charges. It is believed five may have not met a time threshold. They also found 67 sets of ashes. In addition to his guilty pleas today, last October Bush admitted 35 counts of fraud by false representation and one charge of fraudulent trading. Four of those families affected were grieving parents, who’d lost a child.
About her own ordeal at the hands of the disgraced Hull funeral director, Karen explained how she still makes sure the ashes she received are treated with respect and love.
“I have no idea if the ashes I’ve got are actually my parents. There were 35 bodies of loved ones found in that building where people thought they’d actually been cremated. Turns out the cremations hadn’t happened so they were left in there decomposing for months and years for some of them. It’s a truly shocking story.
Karen used Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in Hull for the cremation of her parents; Allan Gordon Griffin, who was 83 when he died in March 2016 and then again for her 86 year old mum who died three years later in 2019.
“He was the consummate professional, very empathetic; he seemed very professional. I had no reason to doubt or question what he’d done. That’s part of the problem. I feel like he’s fooled me twice. He’s a monster. I feel like I’ve been mugged. “
She told how she turned her parents’ ashes into necklaces for the grandchildren: “I had no reason to doubt or question any of what he’d done on either occasion which is obviously why when my mother died I then used him again.
“After my mum died, I mixed their ashes that I had, assuming they’re my parents and I got some little necklaces made with the ashes for the grandchildren. Obviously I’ve kept one as well and then I’ve got a little ornament at home, in the shape of a love heart, made out of the ashes, so they’re at home with me.
“I scattered the rest at the crematorium on my mother’s birthday and I got a rose bush. So they were reunited on my mum’s birthday the year that she died. “
She explained how two years ago when police raided the Legacy premises, the horror started to emerge and she found out the ashes may not have been her parents, leaving her ‘tormented’.
“I felt anger at first, but the overriding feeling now is that of torment, is it them or not?” she said. “I feel totally tormented by it. But you know, if the ashes I have turn out not to be my mum and dad then they’re being loved and respected as if they are my mum and dad. I chat away to them when I’m at home I go to the crematorium and I chat to them too. I’ve been to my grandson’s little Easter sing-along at the church this morning, so, I’ve been telling my mum and dad about that this morning when I got home. That brings me comfort, and that’s how I deal with.”
Karen says she’s even taken her parents abroad with her: “I take them on holiday with me, so last year they came to Japan with me and I love that. If somebody’s got my parents that isn’t me, as long as you do the same, we’re all okay, aren’t we? We need to be able to find some sort of peace and that actually brings me peace, thinking that somebody else has got them and the chatting to them and loving them like I do.”
But she is determined to fight so this never happens to other families: “The reputation of funeral directors is in tatters, because of Robert Bush. He’d held onto some of those bodies for two years. Then you’ve got people’s ashes, 163 lots of ashes were taken from those premises. Why is he holding onto ashes? Why is he giving people the wrong ashes?
“We know that there’s at least two or three men that have got their wives’ ashes that turned out that they’re definitely not their wives because their wives were cremated three months after they were given ashes. Bush was in debt and had not paid his subscriptions as a funeral director. But nobody went to his building. Why?
“He’d stopped paying Hull city council for cremations, he owed the council £50,000 which is why he’d started shipping bodies over to Leeds and Bradford for cremations. We need at least annual inspections, going through buildings from top to bottom, checking paperwork, to check what deceased they’ve got here, who you’re holding and how long you’ve had them for.
“To make sure there are no bodies being held in the way that Robert Bush held them. Now, I don’t think that’s too much to ask!” I don’t want anybody else in this country to feel how I feel, never mind the people who actually had their loved ones in there that were supposed to have been cremated.”
“It’s made me more determined to make sure this never happens to another family in this country again. I would like us all to start talking about death and what is going to happen when we die. Go and chose your funeral director before you die. At least it will give you some peace of mind.”
“We cannot put any, not one single more family through what we have been through for the sake of an absolute disgrace of a funeral director. I think everybody assumes that there’s laws to protect the deceased. And there isn’t. Not one. I find it shocking.”
Tristan Essex, whose gran Jessie Stockdale’s remains were found at Legacy, said: “The fact that there’s no regulation is absolutely ridiculous. They control everything else we do, why can’t they do right by us when we die? The Government should have sorted it out a long time ago, there’s no excuse for not having done it.”
And Michaela Baldwin, whose stepfather Danny Middleton was one of the bodies found, said: “The fact that it’s harder to open a sandwich shop than a funeral parlour is absolutely disgusting.”
Earlier this year, Richard Elkin and Hayley Bell – who ran Elkin and Bell Funerals in Gosport, Hampshire – were jailed for four years by a judge who heard details of bodies covered in maggots, shedding skin and lying in their own fluids as they were decomposing. Hampshire’s Assistant Chief Constable Tony Rowlinson and Hampshire and Isle of Wight’s Police and Crime Commissioner Donna Jones said officers investigating the Elkin and Bell case “discovered a judicial black hole” as they had to rely on common law charges because there is no legislation to prosecute the crimes they committed.
The call for regulation of the funeral sector also came from the David Fuller Inquiry, which revealed an “unregulated free-for-all” where anyone could set themselves up as a funeral director, work at home and keep bodies in their garages if they wished.
In independent probe about care arrangements for people in death was launched because of necrophiliac killer David Fuller, who abused at least 100 deceased women and girls in two hospital morgues over a 12-year period. Fuller, from Heathfield in East Sussex, was given two life terms in 2022.
MPs have also called for regulation after a BBC investigation revealed how babies’ bodies were kept at a funeral director’s house in Leeds. One woman described how she found out that her dead son had been put in a baby bouncer in a funeral director’s living room. But police later decided no crime had been committed.
Two industry bodies – the National Association of Funeral Directors (NAFD) and the National Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors (SAIF) – have codes of practice but these do not have statutory force and membership is voluntary.
In autumn 2025, the Labour government said it was committed to getting funeral regulation right and that work on the matter was being undertaken on a cross-departmental basis. Earlier this year, the government said it would decide by the summer whether statutory regulation of the industry should be introduced.
