Police footage shows chaos inside Hull funeral home
Police body-worn camera footage released during Robert Bush's sentencing hearing shows the chaotic interior of Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in Hull, where officers found 35 bodies and more than 100 sets of ashes after a March 2024 raid. The former funeral boss has admitted 67 offences.
Key Takeaways
- Humberside Police bodycam footage shows disorder behind a tidy front room at Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in Hull.
- Officers found 35 bodies and more than 100 sets of ashes when the Hessle Road premises were raided in March 2024.
- Robert Bush has admitted 67 offences, including failing to bury or cremate people and handing families the wrong ashes.
- His Hull Crown Court sentencing hearing heard victims describe breaches of trust on an "almost industrial scale."
What did police find inside Legacy funeral home?
According to BBC News, newly released body-worn camera footage from Humberside Police captures the scale of chaos at the funeral parlour. A front room featured pale yellow chairs, boxes of tissues, and a print nodding to Hull's fishing heritage.
Behind a partition wall—an area Bush ordered an employee to keep hidden from others in the industry—officers filmed dim corridors and messy side rooms strewn with rubbish. Instruments and carrier bags sat on work surfaces and sinks, while desks were littered with paperwork.
Prosecutors described damp and mould spreading to coffins, with faeces and dried bodily fluids on the floor. Among the most distressing finds were remains in a paper bag that police initially mistook for a baby bird, later noticing hospital wristbands for Baby Jasmine Beverley, born on 13 May 2022.
At about the same time officers filmed inside, Bush was arrested at Heathrow Airport after returning from holiday. Motorcycle racing suits and helmets hung neatly nearby—an orderly contrast to the rest of the site.
Why did Robert Bush say bodies were not cremated?
In police interviews released alongside the footage, Bush was asked why "25 or so bodies" had not been cremated when they should have been. He blamed cash-flow problems and said debt "started to accrue," claiming holding onto bodies presented an opportunity he did not have to cremate them immediately.
"If I held on to [the bodies] for a little bit and back-filled another one and catch up. But I didn't catch up," he told detectives. He said he should have contacted the council's bereavement services and apologised, adding: "It was poor choices."
During a second arrest in July 2024, Bush compared being held at gunpoint to treatment of revolutionary Che Guevara and called the approach "vindictive." When asked about funeral-plan money that entered his business account without payments to the plan a victim thought she had purchased, he replied "no comment."
How have families reacted at Hull Crown Court?
Bush's five-day sentencing hearing, which began on Monday, heard he breached families' trust on an "almost industrial scale." Relatives wept as prosecutors outlined the "horror scene" at Hessle Road. One mother earlier called Bush's actions "the lowest of the low" after an expert said ashes that should have belonged to a baby appeared to come from an adult.
Victim statements described fraudulent funeral plans with no records, charity donations never passed on, and lasting doubt over whether ashes belonged to loved ones. Bush's barrister said "greed and incompetence" likely played a role and that he had accepted responsibility. He is due to be sentenced later this week.
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