WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT – The Crown Prosecution Service will attempt to compensate the families impacted by Robert Bush, who has started his 20-year prison sentence
Demon funeral director Robert Bush’s bank accounts have been frozen and his assets seized as prosecutors attempt to recover some of the cash he fleeced from his many victims, it has been claimed.
Bush, who gave bereaved families the wrong ashes and stockpiled the decomposing bodies of 35 people, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison. For more than one decade, he broke the trust of his clients at Legacy Independent Funeral Directors on an almost industrial scale and in a myriad of ways, from mixing up ashes to swindling vulnerable pensioners with bogus funeral schemes.
During his trial last week, the jury heard how he spent £42,000 on holidays, £21,000 on his motorcycle racing hobby and more than £17,000 on home improvements from the cash-grab after defrauding mourning families. He spent the huge sums between 2017 and 2024, according to financial records.
The court was told that in those seven years, £3,076,522 was paid into his business and personal accounts. His spending was laid bare as the horrifying details emerged about how he treated the bodies he was supposed to care for – and how he ripped off dozens, including someone who used to work for him as a pall bearer.
Now, the Crown Prosecution Service plan to reimburse as many people as possible, the BBC report, and will do it by taking control of his accounts and assets.
Laura Tams KC, deputy chief crown prosecutor at the CPS, said: “We will be looking at him, at the financial aspects of this case, to see if we can confiscate any of the proceeds of his crimes and try to compensate the families.”
She went on: “This was not a case of somebody that had recently fallen on hard times. I think the scale of the offending, the length of time it had gone on for, showed that really this had become something of his business model.”
Ms Tams added that the CPS’s priority has been to ensure it built a “robust” case that showed the full extent of the 48-year-old funeral director’s offending “so that the families could get justice”.
Prosecutors said his holiday spending over the seven years included £6,400 on three trips to Center Parcs, £3,800 on a holiday to Italy and £3,000 on the trip to Arizona. It was on that trip with his daughters that the “horror scene” at the funeral home was discovered, and the police called.
He also splashed out on jewellery, with £1,000 in Boodles, posh meals amounting to £3,385 including a £250 meal in Covent Garden restaurant Clos Maggiore and theatre trips, records show.
In police interviews, Bush told how debts left him unable to pay for cremations. But in court, it emerged that the crooked businessman took £162,000 a year for himself, and transferred an average of £52,000 a year to his wife.
The prosecutor said previously: “However, the turnover reported to HMRC in these years does not reflect this. It is not possible to reconcile the handling of cash within these accounts. During this time, his profligate personal spending and transfers to his wife, Vikki Bush, account for £879,655.94.”
“The financial situation within the business was not dire, but likely mismanaged, and the expenditure reflected Mr Bush’s priorities and not those whom he was meant to be serving,” the prosecutor continued.
“For all of Mr Bush’s claims about his finances, it should be borne in mind that the cost of a single cremation was around £500, and yet Mr Bush chose not to deal with those bodies entrusted to him, but to operate as he chose and spend the money on himself and others.”
One of twisted Bush’s victims has told the Mirror the funeral director went quickly from the “consummate professional” to “Frankenstein”.
Speaking in our brief film about Bush’s horrific acts, Karen Dry said she is praying the fiend is served justice for his crimes. The mum-of-two told us she may never know if she actually has her mum and dads’ ashes.
Ms Dry, of Cottingham, Hull, said: “He was charming. He was pleasant and very patient, he was a consummate professional. He had a certain pleasantness about him. He had a nice personality.
“But we realised he was actually a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The truth is you can’t DNA-test ashes. This man has affected hundreds of families. A small village full. There’s probably more Frankensteins elsewhere – hiding in plain sight.”
