Arrested For Corpse Abuse
The headlines out of Pueblo, Colorado, have once again shattered the collective trust of families navigating the most vulnerable moments of life and loss. The recent arrests of brothers Brian Lee Cotter and Christopher Aaron Cotter. They were the operators behind Davis Mortuary. This brings a deeply disturbing chapter into the judicial light. Each man faces a staggering 125 counts of abuse of a corpse, alongside multiple felony charges for forgery and theft.
For nearly a year, families have waited in agonizing limbo. State inspectors uncovered twenty-four decomposing bodies and numerous skeletal remains. These remains were hidden behind a concealed, barricaded door at the mortuary.
The months between that gruesome discovery and these arrests felt painfully long. However, this timeline speaks to the meticulous reality of the justice system. Building an airtight case in an investigation of this magnitude requires exhausting work by prosecutors and investigators.
The truth is, processing forensic evidence in this type of case is an absolute nightmare. Investigators have had to painstakingly identify remains—some of which had been hidden for over fifteen years—and sift through human tissue left in containers, all while untangling a web of allegedly misappropriated pre-need contract funds. It is a slow, deeply distressing process, but a necessary one to ensure that true accountability is met.
The Legal Reality of “Abuse of a Corpse”
To understand the legal gravity of what occurred, we can look directly to the Colorado Revised Statutes. According to C.R.S. Section 18-13-101, a person commits the crime of abuse of a corpse if, without explicit statutory or court-ordered authority, they remove a body or remains from a grave or place of sepulcher without proper consent, or if they treat the remains “in a way that would outrage normal family sensibilities”.
Colorado recently raised this offense from a misdemeanor to a Class 6 felony. This change reflects the deep emotional trauma families suffer when death’s sanctuary is violated. Hidden rooms, unfulfilled cremations, and fake cremains undeniably cross this line. These acts grossly outrage families who expect dignity for their loved ones.
A Broken Formula: Big Money, Total Secrecy
The Davis Mortuary scandal—much like the horrifying Return to Nature case in Penrose before it—unmasks a fundamental flaw in the commercial funeral industry. It reveals a system built on high financial costs and total corporate secrecy.
As a society, we are conditioned to believe that paying thousands upon thousands of dollars guarantees professional, respectful care. We hand over our life savings and the bodies of our people, and then a curtain of corporate isolation drops. Then we aren’t allowed behind the scenes. We are told to trust the sterile, professional facade. These repeating scandals prove, often you pay an exorbitant amount of money, and receive a complete disregard for human dignity, hidden away behind a locked door. When death care is a commercial assembly line protected by industry secrecy, the sacredness of the transition is entirely lost.
The Compassionate Alternative: Death Midwifery
It does not have to be this way. You do not have to surrender your loved ones to an opaque commercial machine. There is a deeply rooted, gentle alternative growing right in our communities: compassionate death midwife care.
A death midwife looks at the end-of-life journey not as a commercial transaction, but as a sacred human milestone. Rather than whisking a body away into a hidden room, a death midwife steps in to hold space for the dying person and their family. This path provides continuous emotional, practical, and spiritual support, bringing death back into the family fold. By emphasizing family-led vigils, home funerals, and deeply personal rituals, death midwifery strips away the industry secrecy and places control, transparency, and genuine dignity back into the hands of those who care the most.
Shielding Your Family Through Pre-Planning
If there is one vital lesson to take away from the systemic failures of the commercial funeral industry, it is the profound importance of pre-planning.
When a death occurs without a clear blueprint, grieving families are thrust into a whirlwind of trauma, forced to make hurried, expensive decisions under extreme emotional duress. This vulnerability leaves them entirely at the mercy of whatever commercial home they choose. By pre-planning your end-of-life choices now, you lift an immense logistical and emotional burden off the shoulders of your family. More importantly, it ensures your final wishes align with honor and transparency, firmly declaring that you choose a dignified, conscious exit over an unpredictable, profit-driven industry.
Contact Going My Way Death Care today to learn how a death midwife can support your family in reclaiming a sacred, transparent end-of-life journey.