Moment police find rotting bodies in decrepit mortuary where 'evil' funeral directors left 46 people to decompose warm rooms - as they are jailed for four years
This is the moment police entered a mortuary where 'evil' funeral directors left 46 rotting bodies to decompose in a warm room.
Between June 2022 and December 2023 Richard Elkin, 49, and Hayley Bell, 42, ran a decrepit funeral directors where bodies were stored in conditions as warm as 15C when they should have been stored at 4C in order to 'reduce the running costs of the business'.
Today, both been jailed for four years after they were found guilty of intentionally causing a public nuisance, preventing lawful burial, and carrying on business with intent to defraud creditors.
During a string of victim impact statements, read in Portsmouth Crown Court this morning, one bereaved mother who had been a friend of Bell told how she was denied the chance to hold her dead baby Albie one last time - after the defendants locked away the infant's body in a casket. The baby boy had died at just 11 minutes old.
In another instance the pair failed to buy a coffin for an elderly man and left his decomposing body in an unrefrigerated mortuary room with water dripping down the walls.
Footage released by Hampshire Police showed the moment an officer entered Elkin and Bell's funeral directors in Gosport, Hampshire, in December 2023.
The officer then made the grisly discovery of multiple bodies being kept in a warm room with a bucket on the floor to catch water from a leaking ceiling.
He can be heard saying there 'may be some offences' because the bodies are not refrigerated to which Elkin and Bell claim there is a 'cooling system'.
Richard Elkin (pictured), 49, has been jailed for four years following a trial Portsmouth Crown Court
Hayley Bell (pictured) ,42, and Elkin ran a subpar funeral directors where bodies were stored in conditions as warm as 15C when they should have been stored at 4C in order to 'reduce the running costs of the business'
'It certainly is not cold, there's water dripping through the ceiling and all sorts', the police officer replies.
The squalid conditions inside the business are laid bare in the video with rubbish piled up alongside visible damp and holes in the ceiling.
At Portsmouth Crown Court, Elkin shouted 'hope you're happy' at the public gallery as he was taken down.
Earlier during the hearing he had to be removed from the dock for shouting at family members giving statements.
The pair have also been banned from directing a company for seven years.
Judge Newton-Price KC, said: 'No sentence can be a reflection of the value and the worth of the bodies neglected whilst in the care of Elkin and Bell.
'The sentence that I pass is not and can never be any measure of that.
'[The son of one victim] said he failed his father. He did not fail his father at all. You did.
At Portsmouth Crown Court, Elkin shouted 'hope you're happy' at the public gallery as he was taken down
The squalid conditions inside the pait's mortuary with damp and mould visible on the walls
Elin and Bell continued providing services despite knowing the business, insolvent since 2019, could not meet its obligations
'[Another victim] was left with putrid smells, shedding skin and maggots. The post-mortem confirmed the advanced state of decomposition. Both her hands were completely de-gloved of skin.'
The judge said he heard 'distressing' statements from families and that bodies were in 'advanced states of decomposition'.
Earlier, prosecutor Lesley Bates KC said Bell and Elkin had exploited 'the absence of regulation in their trade' to commit 'serious and broad-ranging' criminal acts while running a funeral parlour together.
The court heard they left 'visceral distress' to the families of 46 deceased people - with some left confused about whether the ashes they received belonged to their loved ones.
During the pair's trial, jurors heard how Bailiffs visiting Elkin and Bell Funerals over debts which had spiralled to £20,000 found bodies 'crawling with maggots' and with 'fly pupae' in the bags.
Others had 'extensive development of mould' and the mortuary had a 'horrific smell of dead bodies' while two were stored in a room without refrigeration and with water leaking through the ceiling.
One body, found on the visit in December 2023, had been left for 36 days and was by then in a badly decomposed condition. The other was that of an elderly gentleman whose family believed he had been cremated.
The firm in Gosport, Hampshire, had been insolvent 'almost since it began in 2019', jurors were told, and the business model had been so disorganised it was a case of 'robbing Peter to pay Paul'.
Elkin and Bell (pictured) were guilty of a 'profound' breach of the trust placed in them by relatives, the judge said
A coffin pictured at Elkin and Bell Funerals. The funeral directors left 46 bodies to decompose in a warm mortuary
The Judge concluded: 'You continually neglected your duty to refrigerate bodies to an adequate level over a sustained period of time.
'You failed to provide adequate refrigeration because you were seeking to reduce the running costs of the business.
'You presented a false impression to Environmental Health officials by maintaining a false record of the daily temperatures
'You presented a false impression to EH officials in particular on the day of their inspection on 6 July 2023 by removing or concealing the body of a baby boy in your care.'
He added that Elkin and Bell's actions 'represented a profound breach of the trust that the relatives had placed in you to treat the deceased with the care, respect and dignity to which they were entitled'.
'Your conduct was not intentional but highly reckless as to the decomposition of bodies and highly reckless as to causing serious distress to that section of the public who had sight of any bodies or who could smell the foul odour of decomposition,' he continued.
'The harm is obvious. It was the serious and enduring distress that you caused to bereaved families.'
Corrinne Boulton was left shocked when she found out her baby son, Albie, had been removed from their funeral parlour when inspectors visited.
Richard Elkin, 49, arriving at Portsmouth Crown Court this morning to be sentenced
A police spokesperson said: 'Another family had entrusted Elkin and Bell with the care of their baby, whose body was brought to the mortuary on 5 June 2023, and it was documented in the mortuary register that the body remained on the premises until 13 July.
'However, on 6 July Environmental Health officials attend the premises and noted that there were no bodies in the mortuary at all, begging the question as to the whereabouts of the baby's body. The family still to this day do not have an answer to this horrifying question.'
Hampshire police's Assistant Chief Constable Tony Rowlinson said: 'Elkin and Bell completely shattered the trust of those who turned to them whilst they were grieving.
'This is one of the worst betrayals I have ever seen in my policing career.
'There are families who now know the extent of the malpractice that went on, and the manner in which their loved ones were handled. But equally there are some families who still have unanswered questions.
'Elkin and Bell have robbed all of those affected of their one chance to say goodbye to their family or friends in a respectful and dignified manner, and that is utterly unforgivable.'
Andrew Eddy, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said: 'Today's sentence marks an important moment — one of the first times funeral directors have been held criminally accountable for denying families a lawful and dignified burial.'
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