A nationwide criminal investigation led to an FBI raid on a Phoenix body-donation business where they discovered, among other unsettling things, a cooler filled with penises and a bucket of limbs.
According to the Arizona Republic, the Biological Resource Center (BRC) offered families free pickup of the body of their deceased loved one in exchange for their body parts. They also cremated the remains of body parts that the company did not sell.
RELATED STORY:
Thirty-three people are currently suing the Biological Resource Center. They allege that their family members remains were “obtained through false statements.” They also said that the body parts were not stored or treated “with dignity or respect” and were sold for profit to middlemen.
Arizona is a regulatory-free zone for the body parts industry. They passed a law in 2017 prohibiting body contribution companies from operating in the state without a license, but they have yet to enforce that law. The state has at least four body contribution companies that are known. According to the Republic, they are all accredited by the American Association of Tissue Banks – but the BRC is NOT.
Former Phoenix FBI special agent Mark Cwynar recalled in the civil lawsuit how he saw body parts piled on top of one another and a “cooler filled with male genitalia.” His most horrific discovery though was a “large torso with the head removed and replaced with a smaller head sewn together in a ‘Frankenstein manner.’”
RELATED STORY:
Some families may have mistaken body contribution and organ contribution, which are two very different things, according to the American Association of Tissue Banks.
The lawsuit claims the BRC often dismembered and sold assorted parts and did not give bodies to charity, as some families may have expected.
Source:
