A “cooler filled with male genitalia,” a “bucket of heads, arms and legs,” “infected heads,” “pools of human blood and bodily fluid” on the floor, and bodies cut up with chainsaws, band saws and other instruments wildly inappropriate for medical dissection were found during an FBI raid on the Biological Resource Center in Phoenix, Arizona. Testimony from the agents describing the horrors they encountered only became public recently – five years after the raid – as part of an ongoing lawsuit against the facility by families who donated the bodies of their deceased loved ones, unaware of the unspeakable things going on inside.
“This is a horror story. It’s just unbelievable! This story is unbelievable,” Troy Harp, one of over 30 members of eight families suing Biological Research Center, told local media upon learning what the agents found inside the facility where he’d donated his mother and grandmother. “Who in their right mind… it’s absolutely gross!” He’s no longer sure the ashes he received in the mail are actually his mother’s, since many of the bodies found in the facility had no identification tags.
The families’ lawsuit alleges the facility dismembered and sold their loved ones for profit, among other claims including improper disposal of remains and breach of contract. Some families were explicitly told their loved ones would not be cut up and sold, while others believed their relatives’ remains were being donated to scientific research. The center reportedly sold heads for $500, arms for $750, and whole bodies for up to $5,000, and the grisly operation had been running since 2007, according to local media.
Criminal proceedings against the facility’s owner – who boasts the unlikely name of Stephen Gore – concluded in 2015, letting him off with only a year of deferred prison time and four years’ probation in return for pleading guilty to “illegal control of an enterprise.”
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