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Inside America's Underground Trade in Human Remains
by Annie Cheney
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Numerous diener thefts have been discovered over the years, from
Maine to Los Angeles. Nearly all of these cases were uncovered
purely by chance. Often the families of the dead noticed
something odd on an autopsy report. Only later did they learn
that parts of their family member's body had disappeared owing
to an intricate deception.
If an autopsy isn't ordered, someone at the hospital calls the
funeral home of the family's choice. A driver comes to pick the
body up and take it to the funeral home. There, the body is
refrigerated until the time comes for what's known in the
funeral trade as "final disposition." If the body is to be
cremated, it may be sent to another funeral home equipped with a
crematorium or to a crematorium at a nearby cemetery. Here, once
again, a stranger, who often has little training or supervision,
assumes control of the body. If the crematorium operator is so
inclined or is familiar with the market, he may be tempted to
remove a body part before sliding the cadaver into an oven. Once
a body is cremated, there's no way to know if anything is
missing.
If the body is to be embalmed, the procedure takes place at a
funeral home. But there too, a corpse may not be safe. The
funeral home may have an agreement with a tissue bank. Each body
may produce a tidy kickback, a thousand dollars, perhaps. Or,
more disturbing, the funeral director may own his own tissue
bank, earning thousands of dollars selling the parts of each
corpse entrusted to his care. He might not bother to ask
permission.
Relatives rarely have the opportunity–or the inclination–to
accompany their deceased loved ones into the realm of hospital
morgues and funeral homes. They sit by their bedsides while they
are alive, clutching at any sign of life. But once death comes,
they are quick to release them into a world, which, for many, is
a kind of wilderness. And there, as in the wild, vultures are
drawn to the dead.
Chapter 2
An Ideal Situation
In 2001, Michael Brown had a thriving cremation business in Lake
Elsinore, California, a pleasant suburban town seventy miles
southeast of Los Angeles. He had five admiring employees, a
beautiful wife, and two sons. Brown, who was in his early
forties, was a loving and supportive father. On most weekends,
he could be found racing dirt bikes with his older son and
attending the boys' ice hockey games. Brown took both boys
camping in the Nevada wilderness. He Jet Skied with them on the
town lake, played golf with them, and taught them how to fly
radio airplanes. Brown beamed when he spoke of his children. "Those kids are my heart and soul," he said.
Brown wasn't a devout Christian, although he displayed in his
spare office a Bible engraved with his name. Sometimes he even
quoted Matthew 7:3 – "Why do you see the speck that is in your
brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own
eye?"
The California state crematorium inspector, Dan Redmond, saw
this same humble philosophy in Brown's work and was impressed by
it. "You can honestly tell when these guys are just in the
business to make an extra buck, and Mike was not like that,"
Redmond said. Redmond noticed that when Brown talked to grieving
families, he listened, counseled, and was careful to avoid any
sales talk or to push a fancy coffin. If a family couldn't afford
a funeral, Brown offered to cut his rates or provide a service
free of charge.
Excerpted from Body Brokers by Annie Cheney Copyright © 2006 by Annie Cheney. Excerpted by permission of Broadway, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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