PUEBLO COUNTY — Former Pueblo County Coroner Brian Cotter’s privately-owned mortuary, Davis Mortuary did business with the county years before he was elected to office. Years later, his mortuary entered an agreement with a state agency for business.
The business agreements with governments are just a few items News5 discovered through a series of open records requests.
Cotter Family Funeral Services, the legal business name for Davis Mortuary received payments from Pueblo County up until the end of January 2015, the same month Cotter was sworn into office.
Colorado state law says it’s a conflict of interest for a county coroner who owns a funeral home to direct business to their funeral home in their official capacity as coroner. Davis Mortuary did not have a contract in 2015 when Cotter first began his role as coroner. Months later, a new transportation contractor started getting paid by Pueblo County.
Financial documents obtained by News5 from the county also shows the Pueblo County Coroner’s office has been paying thousands of dollars for a new building starting in 2022.
The new building on Santa Fe Avenue costs $21,120 a month, but there’s not a “chiller” or refrigerator so the coroner’s office is still operating out of its office on Midtown Circle Drive, which costs $2,625 a month.
While Davis Mortuary hasn’t been doing business with the county, it received a contract from the state’s Department of Corrections (DOC) beginning in January 2024. The contract was for transporting and cremating remains of people who die in state prisons. An additional contract was put in place from January of 2025 to June 2025.
While Davis Mortuary was contracted to cremate remains, its crematory license for the state expired in Nov. 2024, Department of Regulatory Agency (DORA) officials said they believe Davis Mortuary has not cremations for at least a decade.
Davis Mortuary did work with Montgomery-Steward, another funeral home in Pueblo, for its cremations. Montgomery-Steward told News5 it began doing cremations with the business in July 2017, it has agreements with multiple other funeral homes in the area and New Mexico.
As part of the agreement with the DOC, Davis Mortuary was not supposed to subcontract out work without prior written approval.
DOC told News5 it contracted work to Davis Mortuary 42 times totaling about $52,000 paid to the Mortuary.
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