Free Republic

In October 2021, a woman in the US state of Arkansas allegedly typed out a simple Facebook message: "Just out of curiosity, would you know anyone in the market for a fully intact, embalmed brain?"The woman was a staffer at Arkansas Central Mortuary Services, and according to prosecutors, the message was sent to an antique dealer in Pennsylvania.A search of his home would later uncover multiple buckets containing human remains, including pieces of brain, heart, livers, skin and lungs.Investigators say the pair were part of an underground community spanning multiple states across the US, made up of both morgue staff...

A former morgue manager at Harvard Medical School is facing federal charges for allegedly stealing, selling and shipping human body parts, according to an indictment. Cedric Lodge, 55, who worked at the medical school’s morgue in Boston, “stole dissected portions of donated cadavers, including…heads, brains, skin, bones, and other human remains, without the knowledge or permission of (the school) and removed those remains from the morgue in Massachusetts and transported them to his residence in New Hampshire,” the federal indictment, filed Tuesday in US District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, said. Lodge allegedly conspired with his wife, Denise,...

Huron Township Police Department (Huron TWP) arrested a Michigan morgue worker and his suspected accomplice for allegedly robbing the residence of a deceased man Feb. 15. Benjamin Pearce and Carnell Franklin-Smith, a subcontractor for the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office, allegedly burglarized the home of a deceased man Franklin-Smith had transported Feb. 14, Huron TWP said in a statement, The Detroit News reported March 2. “The investigation revealed that suspect Franklin-Smith worked for a company (that) is contracted by the Wayne County Morgue for removal of decedents from their residence for transport to the (morgue),” Huron TWP said in the...

Space issues have become so acute at the Seattle-King County morgue in Washington state that local officials are considering keeping bodies on gurneys and partnering with local funeral homes for storage as emergency stop-gap measures. “A key indication of just how bad things are … the medical examiner’s office is now struggling with the issue of storing bodies because the fentanyl-related death toll continues to climb,” Seattle-King County Public Health Director Dr. Faisal Khan said at a Board of Health meeting last week, according to KTTH radio. “Obviously, they have finite space in the coolers they use, and that space...

The body of software entrepreneur John McAfee remains in a Spanish morgue a year after his death as a legal case lodged by his family to demand further checks is yet to be resolved, authorities and his lawyer said. McAfee, who launched the world's first commercial anti-virus software in 1987, was found dead, aged 75, on June 23 last year in his prison cell a few hours after Spain's high court authorised his extradition to the United States on tax evasion charges.

An employee of a Hamilton, Ohio funeral home and cremation service died yesterday, after being accidentally cremated by one of his coworkers.

A temporary mortuary site is being built at Birmingham Airport in preparation for an expected rise in coronavirus deaths, West Midlands Police have said. It comes as Birmingham's NEC and Manchester Central exhibition centres are set to be converted into temporary hospitals by mid-April if required, Sky News understands. Work has begun on the mortuary site which will initially be able to accommodate 1,500 deaths before expanding to hold more. It is expected the temporary site could ultimately accommodate all deaths across the West Midlands, including those not related to the coronavirus, as regional mortuaries may close due to staffing...

Senator Bernie Sanders likes his hotel rooms cold and does not like slow flushing toilets, according to a leaked tour rider from his 2020 presidential campaign. Referred to as the 'Senator Comfort Memo,' the document offers specific arrangements that need to be met for Sanders' hotels, food, drink, family and staff. Marked 'confidential: for campaign staff use only, not for circulation,' the two-page memo is dated April 10, 2019 and was first reported by the Smoking Gun Wednesday. **SNIP** Sanders requests that rooms have a down comforter or at least one extra blanket and also asks that they come stocked...

Washington — Although the Federal Emergency Management Agency denied Puerto Rico's request to dispatch forensic units to Puerto Rico to help process a mounting backlog of bodies, the island's government has received a much-need reprieve. The fiscal board which controls spending in the U.S. territory will allow Gov. Ricardo Rosselló to use $1.5 million in funding to curtail the backlog in the island's morgue. …(snip) ...he FEMA official said these issues could be not be "attributed" to the natural disasters that struck the island, which triggered the first DMORT deployment. "These and the other courses of action ... address systemic...

The odor of decomposing bodies has renewed calls to replace a county morgue in northern Illinois. The Daily Herald reports the Kane County morgue only has room for two bodies in its freezer. The facility has seen a sudden influx of decomposing bodies over the past few weeks. Officials have been storing the bodies in coolers, which doesn't completely mask the smell. Employees in neighboring buildings have started to complain.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Kentucky State Rep. Dan Johnson, who was under investigation for alleged sexual molestation, has committed suicide. Bullitt County Sheriff Donnie Tinnell said Johnson shot himself on a bridge on Greenwell Ford Road in Mt. Washington, and the gun was recovered.

Since the Veteran's Affairs scandal broke in 2014, exposing the hospital system and government employees left thousands of veterans on long waiting lists leading to death, the agency has received an increase in spending to deal with the backlog and wait times. Things have gotten worse, not better. Wait times have doubled and now, a horrifying report out of Illinois shows bodies of deceased veterans were left in the hospital morgue for months.

He made a short film before returning to Libya about his excitement over his post. He was an Arabic speaker with experience of the Arab world. Chris Stevens even supported the intervention in Libya and the overthrow of Muammar Al-Gaddafi...here, Chris Stevens is videotaped unceremoniously after his death...Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, laughed when she found out about the deaths, famously saying We came, we saw, he died.

The bodies of at least 28 veterans were found this past week at the LA CoronerÂ’s office. The bodies had never been buried. CBS Local reported: The bodies of 28 veterans at the L.A. County Morgue were finally moved Friday for burial to the Riverside National Cemetery. CBS2/KCAL9 pressed the L.A. County CoronerÂ’s Office Thursday to find out why the bodies had not yet received a proper burial after a source indicated there may have been as many as 60 veterans at the morgue for the past year and a half. The morgue says the bodies were unclaimed and they...

The bodies of 28 veterans at the L.A. County Morgue were finally moved Friday for burial to the Riverside National Cemetery. CBS2/KCAL9 pressed the L.A. County CoronerÂ’s Office Thursday to find out why the bodies had not yet received a proper burial after a source indicated there may have been as many as 60 veterans at the morgue for the past year and a half. The morgue says the bodies were unclaimed and they donÂ’t know how long the veterans were there. The law states veterans are supposed to receive a proper burial. The Veterans Administration says they were never...

The dead infant boy found among dirty laundry and hauled from St. Paul by a cleaning service to Red Wing, Minn., came from the Regions Hospital morgue and was stillborn late in the second trimester nearly two weeks ago, authorities said Wednesday. Red Wing police added there is no indication of foul play in connection with the discovery Tuesday by Crothall Laundry workers of the remains of the boy, who was stillborn 45 miles to the north on April 4. The hospital, in a statement issued Wednesday, said this was “an unfortunate event involving the handling of remains” that had...

Terminal Ballistics as Viewed in a Morgue One of the benefits of working in a morgue is that I get to see what works and what doesn't. Ballistic gelatin is good as far as it goes, but there's nothing like seeing what a bullet actually does once it strikes bone, flesh, and organs. Suffice it to say, it doesn't always mimic ballistic gelatin. The other is that I get to hear some great CCW stories. Here's one of them: A recently-married couple living in one of the less desirable sections of Atlanta decided that for safety purposes they should get...

Man Nabbed for Thawing Far Eastern Morgue A homeless man with a criminal record is to blame for defrosting a morgue in Vladivostok, an incident described as a “pending biological disaster,” police said on Thursday. The suspect, a 49-year-old Azerbaijani native, stole pipes transmitting refrigerants to the body storage area in order to sell them for scrap metal, local news agency PrimaMedia.ru reported, citing a spokesman for police in the far eastern Russian city. The incident took place on Monday, but the theft was not discovered until the next day, when temperature in the morgue rose above zero degrees Celsius,...

DETROIT (CNNMoney.com) -- At 1300 E. Warren St., you can smell the plight of Detroit. Inside the Wayne County morgue in midtown Detroit, 67 bodies are piled up, unclaimed, in the freezing temperatures. Neither the families nor the county can afford to bury the corpses. So they stack up inside the freezer. Albert Samuels, chief investigator for the morgue, said he has never seen anything like it during his 13 years on the job. "Some people don't come forward even though they know the people are here," said the former Detroit cop. "They don't have the money." Lifelong Detroit residents...

Baghdad morgue struggles to cope with flow of bodies By Oliver Poole in Baghdad (Filed: 05/05/2006) The month after the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra was the bloodiest in Baghdad's modern history, with 1,294 bodies arriving at the city's morgue. Ninety per cent had been shot, said the facility's deputy director, Dr Qaiss Hassan, as official figures were released of the carnage that came after the destruction of the revered Shia holy site on Feb 22. A coffin arrives at the morgue There was a wave of tit-for-tat sectarian killings as Shia mobs rampaged through the Iraqi capital,...