Robert Bush’s barrister said his client has apologised to the relatives of the dead he mistreated in a systematic way at his Hull firm.
Crooked funeral director Robert Bush accepts he is “hated and despised” as a “pariah” and has apologised to the families left devastated by his mistreatment of their deceased loved ones, a court heard.
Bush’s version of events at his firm Legacy Independent Funeral Directors was heard for the first time on Wednesday after more than two days of emotional testimony from his victims.
After prosecutors said the 48-year-old should face between 20 and 25 years in prison for multiple charges of preventing lawful burials, fraud and theft, his barrister told a judge: “He has expressed himself to the court, and through the court to the families, as being sorry.”
Richard Wright KC, defending, added that his client accepted his apology “is likely to be angrily rejected” by those relatives.
Watched by many of those families, Mr Wright said: “This offending has caused extreme emotional pain, anguish and upset on a scale that it is difficult to comprehend.”
He said: “He is treated, completely understandably, as a pariah – hated and despised.”
Bush is to be sentenced for 67 offences spanning 12 years and affecting hundreds of victims.
A court has heard he breached the trust placed in him by grieving families “on an almost industrial scale”, by keeping bodies for months after they should have been cremated, giving out the wrong ashes, taking money for funeral plans without making any of the arrangements and stealing charity donations collected at services.
Mr Wright told the court: “Over the course of the last two-and-a-half days the court and, through the unprecedented global media coverage, the world has listened quietly as victim after victim after victim of Robert Bush has either come forward to read their own victim personal statements or has had their statements read on their behalf.
“He has heard witness after witness castigate his character and heard their entirely understandable anger, pain and outrage, all directed at him. And all rightly directed at him.”
Mr Wright said Bush has written to the court to apologise and “he offers that apology without qualification and he accepts that responsibility”.
Continuing his mitigation, he said: “Dignity in death matters and there can be no hiding from the fact that, by his conduct, Robert Bush has deprived the dead (and) their families, of that basic dignity.”
He said: “Whether or not he conducted hundreds or thousands of funerals perfectly properly, his criminal conduct taints every family.”
He accepted that Bush had “tainted the memory of every person who has been through his hands”.
Mr Wright said he accepted that his client’s apology “is likely to be angrily rejected as some late attempt to gain some trifling advantage”.
He said: “We submit it is not that.”
Mr Wright told the court: “There are demands for answers – where did the money go, why did he do it? They are all very good questions.
“Questions assume there are good answers or clear explanations that explain his behaviour.
“Greed, incompetence, the passage of time, an inability to keep up with his own failings.
“We submit all of these are likely to have played a part, though none satisfactorily answers the questions.”
He said that Bush was not engaging in the “high living” often seen in cases of fraud, but added: “There is no doubt his priority was not his customers or their loved ones, and that lack of priority may be the best explanation there is.
“He prioritised himself, his family and his interests over those who entrusted the deceased to his care.”
On the third day of Bush’s sentencing on Wednesday, prosecutor Steven Ball was asked by the judge what prosecutors thought the total sentence should be and said: “It’s a difficult question to navigate … but somewhere between 20 and 25 years.”
“This is an unprecedented case,” Mr Ball said.
Earlier in the day, the court heard that Bush spent more than £42,000 on holidays while he was defrauding scores of customers.
He also spent £9,000 on camping and almost £7,000 on motorcycle racing in the year he told a grieving mother that her unborn baby had been cremated, while leaving it on the floor of his funeral home in a paper bag.
Financial records submitted to the court showed that between 2017 and 2024, when he was arrested, Bush spent more than £42,000 on holidays, £21,000 on motorcycle racing and £17,400 on home improvements.
Throughout that time, the court has heard, he was defrauding customers by taking money for funeral plans he was not authorised to set up and giving families the wrong ashes for their loved ones.
Prosecutors said his holiday spending over the seven years included £6,400 on three trips to Center Parcs, £3,800 on a trip to Italy and £3,000 on the holiday he was taking with his daughter in Arizona when the horrors at the funeral home were discovered.
Records showed that in 2022, the year he failed to cremate Jasmine Beverley’s baby Sunny Beverley-Conlin, he spent more than £9,000 on camping.
Prosecutors also highlighted almost £10,000 of retail spending, including £1,000 in Boodles jewellers, and £3,385 on restaurants, including £250 for a meal at fashionable Covent Garden restaurant Clos Maggiore.
Prosecutor Mr Ball said that between March 17 2017 and April 8 2024, almost £1.49 million was transferred into Bush’s personal bank account from Legacy business accounts.
Mr Ball added that in that time the total received in Legacy and Bush’s accounts was more than £3 million, but the turnover reported to Companies House and HM Revenue and Customs did not reflect this.
More than 80 people have either faced Bush to tell the stories of how he devastated their lives, or had their statements read in court by prosecutors.
Many broke down in tears as they described Bush’s “callous” disregard for relatives they had entrusted to him.
Bush sat in the glass-fronted dock, wearing a dark suit as he listened to proceedings on Wednesday.
Police were called to Legacy’s Hessle Road premises in March 2024 after concerns were raised and officers found 35 bodies and more than 100 sets of ashes.
In April, Bush pleaded guilty to 30 counts of preventing a lawful and decent burial, and theft from the 12 charities.
He had already admitted 30 counts of fraud by false representation relating to bodies found at the site, and four “foetus allegations” of fraud, where he presented ashes to women falsely saying that they were “the remains of their unborn”.
Bush also pleaded guilty to a further charge of fraud, covering the ashes of 57 people between 2017 and 2024, and one of fraudulent trading relating to funeral plans between 2012 and 2024.
