Thu Jun 13, 8:37 AM ET
DETROIT (Reuters) - A Taiwanese man who claims to have castrated about 50 people and was caught over the weekend with human testicles in the refrigerator of his suburban Detroit home may not have committed any crime, police said on Wednesday.
Lt. Bruce Smith of the Oak Park police department said the 29-year-old man was arrested early on Saturday after he surgically removed the testicles of a Michigan man who was later rushed to a local hospital with severe bleeding.
The would-be doctor was released shortly afterwards, however, because his "patient" had asked to be castrated and was a consenting adult, Smith said.
"We're waiting for a determination from the prosecutor's office as to what if any charges will be made," Smith said.
Authorities said they had no clues as to the motivation behind the operations.
However, many of those seeking castration do so to satisfy a sexual fetish. Accredited doctors are unlikely to perform such an operation, preferring instead to urge the patient to seek counseling rather than mutilation.
Smith said the Taiwanese man entered the United States on a student visa and claimed to have performed about 50 castrations in the United States and his previous home in Australia.
His latest patient, a 48-year-old man from the upscale Detroit suburb of Birmingham went under the knife on his kitchen table. After the operation the two men shared a pie, but when the Birmingham man started laughing, he noticed he was bleeding and emergency medics were called.
"They were having pie," said Smith, referring to a post-operative dessert the two men had been sharing before the medics arrived at the scene.
The testicles found in the man's refrigerator allegedly belonged to a Canadian man who had been operated on a few days earlier in the back of a van, Smith said.
He added that the Birmingham man apparently contacted the unlicensed surgeon through one of at least two sites on the Internet promoting voluntary castration.
"There's a group of people out there that are interested in this, in having it done, and have it done, and talk about it," Smith said of the Web sites.
"It's a an unusual case, let me say that," said Smith.
"This is the first I've ever heard of anything like that or anybody around here's ever heard of it."
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