WARNING: contains graphic descriptions some may find distressing
FBI agents raided an Arizona body donation center and found buckets of body parts. There was a woman’s head sewn onto a male torso “like Frankenstein” on the wall, a cooler full of male genitalia, and gruesome details from a lawsuit testimony.
The discovery was made at the Biological Resource Center (BRC) in Phoenix, during a human body parts trafficking raid across multiple states in 2014.
Agents also found bodies that had been cut up with “tools that are not appropriate for dismembering scientific bodies,” such as band saws and chainsaws, according to the lawsuit.
Troy Harp is one of the 33 people suing the facility. Harp donated his mother’s and grandmother’s bodies to the BRC in 2012 and 2013, thinking that their bodies would be used for scientific purposes such as cancer research.
The BRC, like many other firms involved in the body donation industry, according to Reuters offered families that they would collect the bodies and cremate part of each free-of-charge, mainly relying on those who could not afford to pay for a funeral.
“This is a horror story. It’s just unbelievable. This story is unbelievable,” Harp said.
Harp said his mother and grandmother wanted their bodies to be used to help medical research after their death. The BRC led him to believe their corpses would be used for scientific purposes.
“Cancer and leukemia, and whatever else using sample cells, that’s what I was told,” he said.
Testimony from one of the FBI agents involved in the 2014 investigation has been released to the public for the first time.
The former FBI agent, Mark Cwynar, reportedly discovered “various unsettling scenes” according to the NYPost during the raid at the BRC, which has since closed.
This included a “cooler filled with male genitalia, a bucket of heads, arms, and legs, infected heads, and a small woman’s head sewn onto a large male body “like Frankenstein” that was then hung up on the wall—that was referred to as a “morbid joke” in the lawsuit.
Buckets of infected human heads & legs, and a cooler full of male genitalia.
New court docs in the lawsuit against Biological Resource Center in Phoenix show an FBI agent’s testimony in the 2014 trafficking raid. A man who donated family to them reacts…https://t.co/uATlQwH2TH pic.twitter.com/bLHfgLgZWu
— Briana Whitney (@BrianaWhitney) July 24, 2019
The agent also said he found bodies without identification tags, and “pools of human blood and bodily fluids,” on the freezer’s floor among the number of disturbing discoveries, the lawsuit details.
In total, agents found 1,755 human body parts at the BRC—from heads to fingernails—which filled up 142 body bags and weighed 10 tons, Reuters reported.
This included 281 heads, 241 shoulders, 337 legs, and 97 spines. Agents found the body parts of at least 36 people in a single body bag.
“Who in their right mind? It’s absolutely gross,” said Harp.
After reviewing thousands of internal BRC records and the confidential law enforcement documents of over 2,200 donors, Reuters found disturbing details of transactions showing the body parts were being harvested and sold.
The facility sold a public school janitor’s liver to a medical-device company for $607, reported Reuters. A product-development company based in Minnesota purchased the lower legs of a union activist for $350 each. A retired bank manager’s torso was bought for $3,191 by a Swiss research institute, while a whole body fetched $5,893, reported Reuters in 2017.
Court documents detailed 2013 prices for body parts, with the cost of a whole spine selling for $950; a body torso and legs with no shoulders or head for $2,900; a knee for $375; a complete foot for $450; a pelvis for $400; a whole leg for $1,100, and a torso with a head for $2,400, reported Arizona Central.
Harp said a box allegedly containing his mother’s ashes showed up on his doorstep. Harp, however, has doubts that the ashes are even hers.
When asked if he feels he has gotten any closure from the incident, Harp replied: “No, this is open, and I don’t think I ever will.”
According to legal documents, the owner of the BRC, Stephen Gore, received one year of deferred jail time and four years of probation after pleading guilty to illegal control of an enterprise.
The lawsuit against the BRC is still open and ongoing.
The Epoch Times reporter Justin Morgan contributed to this report.
