Annie Cheney - Body Brokers: Inside Americas Underground Trade in Human Remains

Contents

For my father, Richard E. Cheney

Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.

Matthew 24:28

The Main Characters

Jennifer Bittner

Former receptionist, Pacific Crematorium and Bio-Tech Anatomical Inc.

Whistle-blower

Michael Francis Brown

Former owner, Pacific Crematorium, Bio-Tech Anatomical Inc., and California Bio-Science Inc.

Now serving twenty years in a California prison for embezzlement and mutilation of human remains.

A. Gray Budelman

Funeral director, Orange, New Jersey

Owner, Mortuary Services of New Jersey

Jim Farrelly (deceased)

Victim, Bio-Tech Anatomical Inc.

Bonny Gonyer

Knee-surgery patient

Recipient of CryoLife tissue

Brian Hutchison

CEO, Regeneration Technologies, Inc.

President, RTI Donor Services

Dr. Gerald Kirby

Former professor of anatomy, Tulane University School of Medicine

Brian Lykins (deceased)

Knee-surgery patient

Recipient, CryoLife tissue

Dr. Michael Mastromarino

Former dentist, New Jersey

Owner, Biomedical Tissue Services Ltd. (formerly Biotissue Technologies LLC)

Ernest V. Nelson

Body broker, California

Former owner, Empire Anatomical Services

Arrested by UCLA Police Department in March 2004 for receiving stolen property.

Free on $30,000 bail.

Joseph Nicelli

Funeral director

Former partner, Biotissue Technologies LLC

Agostino Augie Perna

Body broker, New Jersey

Owner, Surgical Body Forms (formerly Limbs & Things), Mobile Medical Training Unit (MMTU) and Innovations in Medical Education and Training (IMET)

Investor and client, Bio-Tech Anatomical Inc.

Arthur Rathburn

Funeral director, Grosse Pointe, Michigan

Former diener, University of Michigan Medical School

Owner, International Biological, Inc.

Dan Redmond

Inspector, Crematories and Cemeteries

California Department of Consumer Affairs

Henry Reid

Embalmer, Los Angeles, California

Diener, UCLA School of Medicine

Arrested on charges of grand theft, March 2004.

Free on $20,000 bail.

Charley Reynolds (deceased)

Body donor, Tulane University School of Medicine

Rene Rodriguez

Homicide detective, Riverside County, California

James E. Rogers

Founder, ScienceCare Anatomical, Inc.

Richard Santore

Crazy Eddie of the Funeral Business

Former funeral director, Brooklyn, New York

Founder, Anatomic Gift Bank of New York

John Vincent Scalia

Funeral director and body broker, Staten Island, New York

Owner, National Anatomical Service, Inc.

Daniel Schonberger

Driver, Pacific Crematorium

John Schultz

Roller hockey coach

Former partner, California Bio-Science Inc.

Dr. Leonard Seelig

Chairman, Department of Cellular Biology and Anatomy, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, Shreveport

Louie Terrazas

Crematorium operator, Pacific Crematorium, Bio-Tech Anatomical, Inc.

Allen Tyler (deceased)

Diener, University of Texas Medical Branch

Consultant, Surgical Body Forms

Employee and partner, Bio-Tech Anatomical, Inc.

Jim Walsh

FBI agent, Texas City

Joyce Zamazanuk

Mother of Jim Farrelly

Human Price List

Introduction

You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.

Epictetus

O ne spring weekend in 2003, I attended a medical conference in Miami at the Trump International Sonesta Beach Resort. The Sonesta is a tower of antiseptic luxury rooms looming over an otherwise decrepit strip of shuttered motels. It offers private balconies with built-in Jacuzzis, a full-service spa, and a $6-million swimming pool complex as well as an enormous ocean-facing conference center booked with corporate retreats, annual sales meetings, and wedding receptions. The event that drew me there, organized by a company called Innovations in Medical Education and Training (IMET), had taken over the conference centers Ocean Room, named for its commanding view of the pale, glassy surf.

For this seminar, the gold taffeta curtains had been drawn and the room accommodated not a board of directors or the families of a bride and groom, but rather six stainless-steel gurneys on which rested the legless, armless, headless remains of six men.

Gathered in groups of two or three around each of the torsos were the customers: thirteen urological surgeons from Canada and the United States who had covered their heads in blue paper shower caps and pulled blue surgical gowns over their golf shirts and Dockers. They had come to learn hand-assisted laparoscopic nephrectomy, a new procedure for removing a kidney through a tiny incision in the abdomen.

Laparoscopy demands great skill in operating a fairly specialized set of medical instruments. If the surgeon misjudges the distance between his scalpel and the patients kidney, he might seriously injure the organ. Most of the surgeons at this conference didnt learn this technique in medical school, so theyd paid up to $2,395 each to IMET to provide them instructors, state-of-the art equipment, fresh cadavers, and a place to practice.

I watched a surgeon adjust his gloves and peer eagerly through his wire-rim glasses at the anonymous flesh. The torso was wrapped tightly, meticulously, in black plastic and secured to the gurney with gray packing tape. The plastic had been peeled back to reveal the corpses belly, which, owing to the force of gravity, was now a cavernous depression of chocolate-gray flesh.

Next to the torso was a round instrument tray from which the surgeon selected a scalpel. He carved a line through the glistening skin near the navel all the way into the abdominal cavity. Using a smooth plastic ring called a Lap Disc, he stretched the incision into a bracelet-sized opening, through which he inserted a hose that was in turn connected to an air pump. Then he inflated the mans stomach like a balloon. As the torso rose, the skin peeled in places, revealing pale flesh underneath and emitting the faintly sweet smell of decaying bowel.

Beneath this canopy of flesh, the surgeon could now go about his work. He had already successfully performed this surgery twice on live patients. But each time he got close to the big blood vessels, he found his hand shaking. A trip to the Trump resort, with its promise of Florida sunshine, luxury rooms, an oceanfront view, and fresh torsos, seemed like a perfect way to build his confidence.

The surgeon had a partner, who looked sick and pale. Before the lab and after eating a lunch of cold cuts, he had excused himself to take a walk outside. I watched him as he paced around the balcony. I still havent gotten over the cadavers from medical school, he said.