August 24, 2025

The Day We Lost Mel All Over Again  

Thursday, August 21, started out like any other day.  I took Daniel to school and came home and started working.  Mid-morning I received a message from Nicole about Davis Mortuary.  This is the mortuary that I entrusted to handle Mel's cremation.  I had known the owner, Brian Cotter, since around 1981 when I worked in the pathology department at Parkview Hospital. Brian Cotter has also been the elected Pueblo County Coroner since 2014.

I should also note that prior to this year, funeral homes in Colorado were not required to undergo yearly inspections.  In fact, if DORA showed up at a funeral home, the owners/operators of the funeral home did not have to allow them entry to the facility.  This is a new law that went into effect in Colorado this year as a result of other funeral home misdeeds uncovered in Colorado.  

The news was reporting that DORA had been to Davis Mortuary the day before (August 20) to perform an annual inspection.  The owner of Davis Mortuary, Brian Cotter, let the inspectors in, but when they noticed a door that was being blocked by cardboard, he told them not to go in there.  Apparently, the inspectors had detected a very foul odor upon entering the building, so their suspicious were high that something was wrong.  When they gained entry into this room, they discovered  what they estimated to be approximately 20 bodies in varying degrees of decomposition.  

Upon questioning Brian Cotter, he admitted to the inspectors that some of the bodies had been there for at least 15 years.  Mel was supposedly cremated there 14 years ago.  Brian also admitted that he had given families fake cremated remains during that time.  Upon watching the news report, I realized that this could have a dire impact on me and on my family.

I suddenly felt like it was February 20, 2011, all over again.  I remember that same fog overcoming me and feeling almost like I was in a trance.  I started making phone calls.  I called the Pueblo Police Department who informed me that DORA was handling the investigation, and they gave me their number to call.  I called DORA who provided me with an email address for their employee who had been assigned to this case.  

I emailed her:

        "Hi:  I am hoping you can help me.  My husband passed away in 2011, and his cremation was supposed to have been handled by Davis Mortuary.  How do I know if his body has been lying in that building all this time?  How do I know for certain that the cremains I received are his?  What are next steps families need to take?  Is someone in authority going to notify us? My husband's name is Melvin W. Emerson, he passed away 02/20/2011.  My name is Patricia Emerson.  Thank you"

She responded:

        "Good afternoon Mrs. Emerson, Thank you for reaching out to us with your concerns. The Colorado Bureau of Investigations has taken over the investigation of this matter and has provided resources for family members to contact them with questions. They can be contacted via email or phone.  Please know that they are in the very early stages of their investigation and may not have answers quite yet.  email - cbitips@state.co.us phone 719-257-3359. Please feel free to contact me with any additional questions."

Once I knew the Colorado Bureau of Investigation was involved, I called them but was only able to leave a message.

Next, I emailed the reporter from KRDO News 13, who had reported the initial story:

        "Hi Celeste:  My name is Patricia (Patty) Emerson.  My husband passed away in 2011.  His cremation was supposed to have been handled by Davis Mortuary.  I called the Pueblo Police Department today and the only information they could provide was a telephone number for DORA.  I called DORA, the only thing I was provided was the email contact for the person in their organization handling this.  I realize it is early in the investigation; however, my husband could very easily be lying in that building decomposing for all this time.  Do you know anything more about the investigation or if/when someone is going to start notifying families? Any information you might be able to provide would be greatly appreciated. Thank you."

I then called the News Station and was informed that there was going to be a press conference that afternoon at 3:30 p.m.

Celeste responded to my email:

        "Hi Patty,  Firstly, I am so sorry to hear about what your family, and many other families, are going through. Our reporter Mackenzie Stafford is digging into this. For now, we don't have much. We do know that the CBI says they will establish a tip line and victim advocate resources for families. As of right now, those have not yet been established.  Officials plan to hold a press conference at 3:30 p.m. We will also update our reports, including Mackenzie's: https://krdo.com/news/2025/08/21/did-you-,entrust-your-loved-ones-remains-with-davis-mortuary-were-digging-into-whats-next/"

I decided then that I was going to go get Daniel from school and bring him home.  Once I got in the car though, I drove to the funeral home.  I think I just wanted to see that there was somebody, anybody there doing anything.  There were only a couple of police vehicles there, but I immediately noticed that there were numerous news agencies set up on the corners of the street near Davis Mortuary and even in the parking lot.  I turned into the parking lot, and there was a news reporter right at the entrance, so I stopped my car and got out and talked to him.  I wanted to know if they had heard something else since it seemed that everyone was waiting there with their cameramen to go on air and make some sort of announcement.  I found out that his name was Josh, and he is a reporter from KRDO News 13, the station that had broken the story.  He told me that they were expecting an update in approximately 8-10 minutes.  He asked me if I knew of someone who might be a victim of these circumstances.  I explained to him that Mel had passed away 14 years ago and that Davis Mortuary had handled his cremation, and that I was very concerned about the news.  I was visibly quite shaken and was in tears.  He asked me to just wait and sit in my car, and as soon as he made his report he would come talk to me and give me whatever updates he had prior to my having to see them on the air.  

I went ahead and parked my car and put my windows down and made a couple of phone calls.  I called Nicole (who was in Idaho at the time) and told her what I was doing.  She was frantic because she wasn't here to help me find out what was going on, and of course she was understandably very upset, as was Aaron who had forwarded Nicole the news story.  After sitting there for about 15 minutes, a lady noticed me and came over to talk to me.  She asked me if I was okay, and she introduced herself as a reporter from the Gazette newspaper.  Around the same time Josh came over to talk to me and explain that the announcement had been delayed, but he wondered if I would be willing to be interviewed.  I agreed, and the newspaper also wanted to interview me, and I also agreed to that.  Rather than just a news story being reported, I thought it was important for the government officials, Brian Cotter, and the community to see the faces of people who had been absolutely traumatized by this news.

This is the link to the report by the Gazette newspaper:

https://gazette.com/news/local/pueblo-county-coroner-accused-of-hiding-decomposing-bodies-in-private-funeral-home/article_57885f6a-ea96-4e67-abf6-093c11d3d244.amp.html

This is the link to reports done by KRDO News 13:

https://krdo.com/news/2025/08/21/did-you-entrust-your-loved-ones-remains-with-davis-mortuary-were-digging-into-whats-next/

I then went to Daniel's school.  I had called ahead and asked them to please have him wait in the office so I could text him when I got there and have him come to the car.  I didn't feel like I could handle facing anybody without falling apart.  Daniel has been learning drive for over a year now, and had just passed the driving test for his license the day before and wanted to drive home.  He got in the car, but when he went to start it, he looked at me and I could tell he was concerned, he could tell I had been crying.  He wanted to know why I had picked him up early.  When I started telling him what had happened, I, of course, started crying again.  This kind sweet grown boy, reached over and grabbed my hand and hugged me.  He then started asking me questions like what we would do if they found Mel in the mortuary.  He was visibly shaken and upset.  It then occurred to me that no matter how shocked I was by the news, my kids were just that, kids, when Mel died.  Daniel was almost 3 and Nicole was almost 12.  I realized that this was the first time that Daniel could comprehend the circumstances and that he was likely really feeling and grasping the meaning of Mel's death for the first time, now with the cognitive abilities to take it all in and really feel the emotions.  I think to a degree the same can be said for Nicole.  She was older when Mel died but still had only the comprehension of death that a 12-year-old can have, not how she must be feeling it as an adult.  

Of course, I know where Mel really is, he's in heaven where he has been for the last 14 years.  The thing that hurts my soul is the thought of him (his body) being cast off into a "secret room" and just left to do what bodies do.  He deserved so much better than that and so did I, so did Daniel, so did Nicole, so did Aaron, so did his granddaughters, and so did all the people who cared about him. I know there will be answers, but I also know those will be a long time in coming.  I also know now that we will never know whether the remains we were given actually belong to Mel.  Cremated remains cannot be tested to determine who they belong to.  The only way we will every know if his body was cast off into a "secret room" in this mortuary will require probably months of investigating and waiting.