Legacy’s owner Robert Bush with his daughter Saskya Bush who is thought to be employed at the family-run funeral parlour (Credit: PA/Instagram)
A funeral parlour may have given grieving families the wrong ashes of their loved ones, it has been revealed.
Fears have been raised that Legacy Independent Funeral Directors handed back the wrong urns to customers, sparking a police raid.
Officers searched three locations run in Hull and East Riding of Yorkshire after receiving a call about the allegations last week.
A hotline set up for concerned families said it has received more than 350 calls in just a few days.
Several relatives have expressed concerns that the ashes they were given following cremation could have been from a different body, the MailOnline reported.
Police outside the Hessle Road branch of Legacy.(Credits: Danny Lawson/PA Wire)
At least one person is believed to have used the ashes to make an item of jewellery to remember their loved one but they are now questioning the identity of the remains.
One man told the Mirror all families who have ‘ever had any dealings with this company are worried.’
Shocked Emma Osborne said that she had been informed that her late stepfather Danny Middleton may be one of the 34 bodies – despite supposedly receiving his ashes a month ago, the Telegraph reported.
She told the outlet: ‘As far as we know he has got his ID band on him, that’s all we know, he has not been identified properly.
Two people have been arrested since the police probe launched (Credits: Danny Lawson/PA Wire)
Owner of Legacy Independent Funeral Directors Robert Bush
(Credits: Harvey Hollingsbee)
‘They [the funeral directors] have given my step-brother ashes a month ago, they have given him ashes saying that it was my step-dad.
‘I think there might be a number of other people that have been in the same [position][, that’s all I can say.’
One grieving daughter has said she ‘feels sick’ at the thought of having been handed ashes not belonging to her dad.
She added: ‘I just cannot believe it’.
Her brother said: ‘My dad’s funeral was ten years ago. We had the service at Hessle Road and now we are wondering if he actually got cremated.
‘I got some ashes but with what has gone on I am not sure they were his.’
A third woman, who asked not to be named, said she was suffering from ‘panic attacks’, ‘depression’ and was ‘not coping’ out of concern about how her partner’s body and remains were dealt with.
She was now questioning whether the ashes in a glass bottle in her home were really from him.
A police cordon remains in place at three Legacy sites.(Credits: Danny Lawson/PA Wire)
Her partner, who was in her mid-60s, was ill with pneumonia and cancer when he passed away in December 2021.
She saw the body when it was at Legacy’s Hessle Road branch in Hull but she was left concerned over marks on his face and neck.
Her partner’s cremation took place in early January but she claimed it took the funeral directors ‘ages for the ashes to be given to me’.
She added: ‘I have still got some of the ashes in a glass bottle and my daughter has got some, but my big worry is that it could be the wrong ashes.’
Police said there is nothing to suggest there is evidence the woman received the wrong ashes.
Police were seen at the Hessle Road branch of Legacy in Hull (Credits: Danny Lawson/PA Wire)
However, she said ‘there is so much speculation on social media that you just don’t know what to think.’
Another grieving daughter, Leila Parker-Poland, told how she was initially told her mum’s ashes couldn’t be found when she visited Legacy.
She said the firm then brought the ashes to her house that night and she even joked about it ‘not being her ashes’.
Legacy also dealt with her dad’s death earlier.
She claimed his body was left in a non-refrigerated room for two weeks.
Ms Parker-Poland said she now has ‘so many questions in my head’.
Family-run Legacy was established in 2010 and is run by Robert Bush and his daughter Saskya Bush who is thought to be an employee at the firm.
So far, 34 bodies have been transported from the firm’s Hessle Road site to a mortuary in Hull for ‘formal identification procedures to take place’, the force confirmed.
A police cordon remains in place around each three sites.
Now a 46-year-old man and 23-year-old woman have been arrested on suspicion of prevention of a lawful and decent burial, fraud by false representation and fraud by abuse of position, police confirmed.
Both remain in police custody.
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