The Denver Post reports that Davis Mortuary owners and brothers Chris and Brian Cotter were arrested Thursday after state officials said they were suspected of storing decomposing bodies in a hidden back room of their Pueblo mortuary for more than a decade. State law enforcement began investigating in August after inspectors found the remains of at least 24 people behind a hidden door, with experts identifying 18 so far and still working to identify the remaining six.
That is not a paperwork oopsie. That is not a sleepy licensing hiccup. That is the nightmare version of institutional failure. Families trusted a mortuary at the worst moment of their lives, and the state now says the owners were hiding decomposing bodies in a back room. There are not enough bureaucratic adjectives in the world to soften that.
The Bullet Point Brief
- The Denver Post says Chris Cotter, 60, and Brian Cotter, 64, were arrested Thursday morning. State officials had not yet said what charges they were arrested on suspicion of, and the 10th Judicial District Attorney’s Office was expected to discuss the charges later.
- Brian Cotter was Pueblo County coroner at the time investigators began looking into him and his brother. That detail takes the civic disgust meter and snaps the needle clean off.
- Inspectors found the remains of at least 24 people behind a hidden door at the mortuary, according to the article. Experts have identified 18 people so far, with identification of the final six complicated by poor records, poor condition of the remains, and degraded DNA.
- Investigators also found multiple containers of bones, cremains, and probable human tissue representing an unknown number of deceased individuals. That sentence should haunt every regulator who ever treated death care like a dusty filing cabinet.
- This is a developing story, so do not embellish the body count, motive, timeline, or charges. The confirmed facts are already grotesque enough to demand answers.
My Bottom Line
This is a Colorado regulatory and common-decency horror story.
The first betrayal belongs to the alleged conduct. Families paid for dignity. They trusted professionals with their loved ones. They expected basic human decency, chain of custody, records, respect, and lawful care. If the state’s account is proven, what they allegedly got instead was a back-room nightmare hidden behind a door.
But the second betrayal is the obvious one: where the hell was the oversight?
Colorado can regulate normal people into a coma. Forms, licenses, fees, inspections, renewals, compliance language, mandatory notices, and little bureaucratic tripwires everywhere. Yet somehow the places where failure becomes grotesque always seem to be discovered after the damage is already rotting behind a wall.
Maybe the full licensing history, inspection trail, complaints, warnings, or agency failures will explain more. Maybe they will not. But those are the adult questions now. Were these operators licensed? Were there prior complaints? Who inspected the facility? Which state agency had responsibility? What did regulators know? What should they have known? What happens to affected families now?
Colorado should not need another mortuary scandal before regulators, lawmakers, and industry watchdogs stop acting like death care is just another sleepy licensing category nobody checks until the smell hits the hallway.
In a functioning state, basic human dignity after death should not depend on whether some bureaucratic checkbox jockey happened to wander into the right back room before the whole thing turned into a criminal case.
Source: The Denver Post
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