The wife of the former Lake County coroner, who once ran funeral homes in Leadville and Silverthorne with her husband, pleaded guilty Thursday, Aug. 17, to misdemeanor charges related to the commingling of cremated remains.

Staci Kent, of the now-defunct Kent Funeral Homes, pleaded guilty to a charge of an unlawful act of cremation and a charge of mortuary consumer protection violation, both unclassified misdemeanors.

As part of the plea deal, the 5th Judicial District Attorney’s Office has agreed to drop charges of “abuse of a corpse,” a Class 2 misdemeanor; a second charge of “unlawful act of cremation;” and a charge of “care of bodies required,” an unclassified misdemeanor.

Noting that the plea deal recommends no jail time, Judge Catherine Cheroutes told Staci Kent that sentencing decisions fall to the court, but if she imposes jail time, Staci Kent would be allowed to withdraw her guilty plea. Both charges hold penalties of up to two years in jail.

“Ultimately, it is up to the court to determine whether a jail sentence would be appropriate or not appropriate,” Cheroutes said. “That will happen at the time of sentencing”

In December 2019, a woman, who had given birth to a stillborn baby, and her husband contacted the Kent Funeral Home in Leadville, where Staci Kent agreed to do the cremation, said Deputy District Attorney Aven Rose while reviewing the factual basis for the guilty plea.

Staci Kent told the couple she would “keep them informed every step of the way” and the ashes would be returned Dec. 20, Rose said, but despite attempts to reach the funeral home, the couple did not hear from Staci Kent until Dec. 23. Staci Kent then reportedly told the couple that their son had been cremated and would be returned later that day.

But when a Kent Funeral Homes employee dropped off the cremated remains that evening, the funeral home included no information to identify whose ashes they were, Rose said. Moreover, when the couple went to empty the ashes into an infant-size urn they had purchased, “there were ashes far exceeding the size of that urn,” she said.

Rose said when the couple contacted Shannon Kent, Staci Kent’s husband, he denied that the ashes were anyone else’s, stating the excess material was due to the cardboard box or the clothes the infant had been cremated in.

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Doctors at Mesa State University later determined that a sample of the cremated remains included recognizable remains of an infant but also longer bone fragments of an older, larger individual and bits of metal, including a large grommet, a piece of an earring and surgical staples, Rose said.

The findings signaled the infant may not have been cremated alone, Rose said. To this day, she added, no paperwork has been provided to the couple to confirm that the ashes the Kent Funeral Home delivered belong to their son.

Deputy Public Defender Dorothea Reiff noted Staci Kent was injured during some of the time around the Dec. 20, 2019, time period when she was not returning the couple’s inquiries. Reiff also noted Staci Kent is concerned about jail time because she and her husband have an adult son with a disability.

Staci Kent’s husband, Shannon Kent, pleaded guilty in December to two counts of unlawful acts of cremation, both misdemeanors, for his role in the commingling of the infant’s cremated remains. Cheroutes sentenced him to six months in jail in February.

On Thursday, the father of the still-born infant noted the case has been going on for years and pushed back against the plea deal negotiated by the 5th Judicial Attorney’s Office. The father expressed disappointment at the prospect of Staci Kent receiving no jail time.

“I have been incredibly disappointed in the DA’s office and their actions in this,” he said. “The vast majority of their decisions didn’t even consult us. They just told us what they were doing.”

This is not the first criminal case involving the Kents. In 2022 Clear Creek County jury found Shannon and Staci Kent not guilty of charges including felony counts of abuse of a corpse and tampering with a deceased human body. That case had to do with the body of a Nigerian man that police said had become badly decomposed after being left for months at the Kents’ funeral home in Silverthorne.

Another case involving Kent concluded in 2021, when a jury found Shannon Kent guilty of second-degree official misconduct, a petty offense, but not guilty of perjury, a felony. That case had to do with Shannon Kent sending his wife to several death scenes in 2019 while he was Lake County coroner. He was sentenced to six months of probation for that instance.