Drum – 22 August 2019

http://www.drum.co.za 22 AUGUST (^2019) | 67
KPHO-TV, ABC 15, FACEBOOK
taker was sold to a medical-devicecom-
pany for $607 (now R8 500).Aretired
bank manager’s torso wasboughtbya
Swiss research institute for$3 191 (about
R44 675). Two femoral arteries harvested
from a church minister’s corpse sold for
$65 (R910) to a Midwestern healthcare
facility. A product-development compa-
ny in Minnesota attained the lower legs
of a union activist for $700 (R9 800).
Entire cadavers went for about $6 000
(R84 000). Many of these were sold to the
military to be used as crash-test dum-
mies in explosives experiments.
This is definitely not what the families
of the deceased had in mind when they
donated the bodies.
Stephen Gore, founder and former
owner of the company, was sentenced to
one year of deferred jail time and four
years’ probation after pleading guilty to
fraud last year.
But for many of the people he conned,
this is little more than a slap on the wrist.
That’s why dozens of families have
banded together in a civil lawsuit against
him. In the paperwork they signed they
were promised that Gore’s facility would
treat the bodies “with dignity and re-
spect” but this definitely didn’t happen.
Last year, Rathburn was sentenced to
nine years behind bars for fraud and
shipping hazardous materials.
Tracy Smolka is still struggling to get
over the fact that her father’s head was
found in Rathburn’s warehouse. It turned
out he’d bought the body part from the
BRC for $500 (R7 000).
It seems that in its quest for bodies the
facility preyed on families with financial
woes. Retired factory worker Conrad Pat-
rick’s body ended up at the BRC because
his relatives couldn’t afford a funeral. In
return for their donation, the facility
promised to cremate a portion of his body
for free and return it to his loved ones.
Using a chainsaw and bandsaw, BRC
employee Sam Kazemi helped cut up
and package Conrad’s body in seven
pieces. His left foot was sent to an ortho-
paedic lab in Chicago, his left shoulder
to a company in Las Vegas, his head and
spine to a project run by the US Army,
and his genitalia to a local university.
The BRC kept his right foot and left knee
in a freezer to later be sold illegally.
When the lab was raided, investigators
found pools of blood and bodily fluids,
and reportedly recovered 10 tons of fro-
zen human remains.
News of the raid caused the family
members of the deceased to experience
the pain of their loss all over again.
Jim Stauffer donated his mother Doris’
body to the lab believing it would be
used in Alzheimer’s research. He was
traumatised when he found out it had
been sold to the US department of de-
fence for use in a study about the dam-
age done by roadside bombs.
It’s not uncommon in the US to donate
a person’s remains to the military or law
enforcement for training purposes, but
thelawstatesthefamilyshouldauthor-
isethis,saysMichaelBurg,oneofthe
attorneys representing the plaintiffs.
Gwendolyn Aloia was just coming to
terms with the death of her husband,
Louis, whose body she donated in 2013
believing it would be used for research,
when she was mortified to discover how
the BRC had profited from his death.
“I was devastated,” she says. “I’ve been
violated. He’s been violated.”
It’slikelythatsomeofhisbodyparts
endedupbeingsoldtoa companyin
Illinois, which in turn later sold them to
a business in Michigan.
But what happened to the rest? That’s
what Gwendolyn would like to know.
“For all I know, that could be my hus-
band’s body they attached to someone
else’shead,”shesays.
“It’sbeyondwordsthathumanbe-
ingscandothis.”
SOURCES: INDEPENDENT.CO.UK, REUTERS.COM, TIME.COM,
CHICAGOTRIBUNE.COM, KMOV4.COM
RIGHT: Police found a total of1 755body
parts when raiding the lab in2014.
TheBiological
Resource Centre
profited from
dismembering
dead bodies and
selling remains
without donor
consent.
None of
the limbs
was properly
tagged to
identify
which donor
they’d come
from