'I'll never recover': Mother's agony after discovering the 'ashes' she treasured were animal remains - leaving her with 'nothing' of the baby she lost
“I always like to think my baby’s out there with someone else, but the unknown is the worst thing about it."
Warning: This story contains distressing content
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A “distraught” woman has said she will never recover after learning what she thought were her unborn baby’s ashes are believed to contain animal remains.
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Lucy Ness has spoken of her pain at being left with “nothing to remind me of my child” and the anguish of not knowing what happened to her ashes, despite hoping that they are with someone who is looking after them.
The 28-year-old put her trust in funeral director Robert Bush after suffering a miscarriage two days before her 12-week scan in April 2021.
Several weeks later, he presented her with a baby urn filled with ashes he claimed were of her unborn child.
The urn sat in her living room for three years until police launched an investigation into Legacy Independent Funeral Directors and Bush was arrested.
Read more: Families demand regulation for funeral directors, amid sentencing of 'pure evil' Robert Bush
Officers discovered that Bush did not collect Ms Ness’s baby’s ashes from the crematorium until two days after he had already given her the urn.
They found the bag that had contained her baby’s ashes at Bush’s funeral home but it was open and had been emptied.
“It’s the big unknown of what’s happened to mine, if he’s given them to someone else…“I’ll never find out, that’s the hardest part,” Ms Ness said.
Her trauma increased when weeks before Bush was sentenced, Ms Ness said police told her that a specialist had examined the remains and believed part of them appeared to be from an animal.
Ms Ness told the Press Association she was “distraught”, saying: “It just seems like one problem after another, with all this, it’s taken a toll on me mentally.
“I’m not the person I used to be, I feel like I’m such a shy person, I don’t have any trust any more.
“I always like to think my baby’s out there with someone else, but the unknown is the worst thing about it.
“He had a duty of care and he’s not followed through with that.”
The disgraced funeral director was jailed for 20 years on Friday, following a five-day sentencing hearing into his sick crimes.
He previously admitted 67 offences spanning 12 years and affecting hundreds of victims at his business, Legacy Independent Funeral Directors.
Bush was motivated by "financial greed" and breached the trust of grieving families "on an almost industrial scale" by keeping bodies for months after they should have been cremated.
He also gave out the wrong ashes, took money for funeral plans without making any of the arrangements, and stealing charity donations collected at services.
Ms Ness, who was told she could not have children because of health reasons, miscarried at 12 weeks into her pregnancy in April 2021.
She told PA: “It was during Covid so I had to go to hospital on my own.“I didn’t know what was going to happen, I’d never been in that situation before.
“I looked up funeral directors and rang (Bush).
“He was lovely on the phone, he talked me through everything, he said he’d contact me at every single stage.
“As a goodwill gesture he said he’d get a baby urn for the ashes. I put my trust in him.”
She added: “I was very emotional, I was a young girl. During Covid, no-one could come with me, I had to do everything on my own.”
Bush rang her on May 10 to tell her the ashes were ready to collect, and she went to the Anlaby Road site a day later to pick them up.
She later found out Bush had not even collected the ashes from the crematorium until May 13.
Ms Ness said: “I found out my sister had bought the baby its first Jellycat, so I left (the ashes) in the living room next to that as a reminder that that’s my baby.”
Almost three years later, Ms Ness saw on social media that Bush had been arrested, and filled in a form from Humberside Police for people who thought they may be affected.
She said: “I didn’t think anything of it at the time, I didn’t think anything like this would happen to me, it feels so surreal.”
A week later, police contacted her and an investigation revealed the ashes she had could not be hers.
Ms Ness said: “It was hard at first to give them back, but my partner said ‘we don’t know who this is’.
“Whoever’s animal I had, it was very much loved and looked after.
“It was very, very hard, I was left with nothing to remind me of my child at all.”
Throughout the investigation, Ms Ness has kept in contact with three other mothers who were given the wrong ashes by Bush, and said: “I would say we’re quite close, it’s nice to know I’m not on my own.”
She said she felt “very numb” thinking about Bush, adding: “I’m not a nasty person, I’ve never not liked anybody but I don’t wish him well, I really hope something bad happens to him.
“I hope he gets put through torture like what he’s put me and the other families through.
“He’s not a nice person, what he’s done is absolutely disgusting.”
Ms Ness said she “hopes Bush gets life” but does not think seeing him sentenced will help, adding: “I don’t think mentally I’ll ever be able to recover from this.”