American Monsters: Stephen Gore

0:00 Warning. Kind of Murdery contains adult themes, explicit language, and descriptions of violence. It is not suitable for anyone, and we recommend you stop listening now. Hello everyone, and welcome to Kind of Murdery, a true crime podcast that's mostly about murder and always about the strange and compelling stories that arise when the pathless traveled twists to darkness and those who walk its shadows surrender to violence and moral corruption. We have a perilous journey ahead, so thank you for lending me your courage and good company.

0:40 Hello, and thanks for being here. I'm your host, Zevan Odleberg, and this is kind of Murdery. Remember if you've got a kind of Murdery story to tell me, please do call eighty eight Murdery. That's eighty eight six eight seven three three seven nine eighty eight murder the letter Why. Beginning in two thousand and one, a man from Adison, Illinois, began buying seven lottery tickets a week for a lottery that was then called the Little Lotto. He bought the seven tickets so he'd have one for each day of the week.

1:08 He always played the same numbers one, six, twelve, fourteen and twenty five, a combination of his football and basketball jerseys and the numbers of his heroes. In two thousand and nine, he won a cool fifty thousand dollars, and on June seventh, twenty sixteen, he won one million dollars. This man's name, well, if you guess Larry Lotto, you'd be wrong, but you've got the right idea. His name is Larry Gambles. That's right. He made one million, fifty thousand dollars gambling, and his name is Larry Gambles.

1:40 And if his was the only story you'd ever heard, you might think that letting your last name guide your life choices seems like a pretty good idea. After all, Larry Gambles gambled and he won big. But slaw your role there, Maverick, because I'm about to tell you the story of Stephen Gore. Now, the MPAA, that's the Motion Picture Association of America, the folks responsible for rating our movies, defines Gore as quote surpassing strong, bloody and or sadistic and or sexualized and or stylized violence.

2:11 In this case, that definition is spot on, and you're about to find out why. Also, while we're on the subject of definitions, ask yourself as you listen to this story, what is the definition of justice? And just what kind of absolute bizarro world do sentencing guidelines come from. I should mention that a twenty seventeen Reuter's article entitled a business where human bodies were butchered, packaged, and sold by John Schiffman, Reid Levison and Brian grow was particularly valuable in putting this episode together.

2:41 And as always, my sources are in the show notes. And so if you're ready, I suggest that you put your personal items underneath the seat in front of you, stow your carry on in the overhead compartment. Let go of the worries of the day, but be sure your seat belt is fastened. There's turbulence expected ahead. Kind of murders. Stephen Gored and the Human chop Shop starts now. Warning this story contains graphic content and it is not for the faint of heart or stomach. The Biological Resource Center or BRC was a for profit body donation company operated by Stephen Gore from two thousand and four until it was raided by the FBI in twenty fourteen.

3:30 The company was housed in a nine thousand square foot building once occupied by an insurance agency. It was a one story facility near two interstate highways and the Phoenix, Arizona Airport. From two thousand and five until early twenty fourteen, court records show that Biological Resource Center BRC received about five thousand human bodies and distributed more than twenty thousand body parts. BRC accepted donations of bodies after people died. The company gave donors in their families free transportation services to pick up the body, plus free cremation.

4:04 One of the problems was that some families thought that a body donation meant their loved one's bodies were being given to charity to help with disease research. Some mistakenly thought the Biological Resource Center would be donating their loved one's organs, not knowing that organ donation and body donation are not the same thing. Loved ones were not aware that BRC dismembered and sold the parts to various middlemen for profit. And that is only the beginning. Again, I'll warn you this story contains graphic content and is not for the faint of heart or stomach.

4:37 Phoenix, Arizona Sam Kazimi stood over the old man's corpse. Nearby lay pliers, a scalpel, and a motorized soad designed to cut drywall and pipe. On a busy day, Kazimi might harvest body parts from five or six people who donated their bodies to science. On this day in November twenty thirteen. The corpse before Kazimi typified the donors who gave there remains to his employer, Biological Resource Center. The man was a retired factory worker with a ninth grade education. He lived with his wife in a mobile home in Mohave Valley, Arizona, and had died six days earlier, age seventy five.

5:13 His name was Conrad Patrick, but after he died and his body was donated, Patrick became a commodity known by the company's initials and a number BRC one three one one two one zero three. A review of thousands of internal BRC records and confidential law enforcement documents containing profiles of Patrick and two thousand, two hundred and eighty other donors reveals invoices and inventories for thousands of body parts harvested from these people. They show how their bodies were dissected, which body parts were sent ware and why the buyers obtained them.

5:46 Kazimi helped cut up and package Patrick into seven pieces. BRC shipped Patrick's left foot to a Chicago area or the pedic Lab. His left shoulder was sent to a Las Vegas company that holds surgical seminars. His head and his spine went to a project run by the US Army, and Patrick's external reproductive organs were sent to a local university. His right foot and left knee were placed in the company's freezers, where they became part of BRC's million dollar inventory of flesh and bone. America's body trade, a little known and virtually unregulated industry, includes businesses like BRC, which call themselves non transplant tissue banks.

6:25 They are also known as bodybrokers. The operations can resemble meat packing plants. At BRC, body parts from heads to fingernails were harvested and sold on Saturday mornings. Kazimi taught college students how to dismember cadavers in the company lab. He also starred in a grizzly training video demonstrating how to carve out a man's spine using a motorized saw. Documents obtained by Reuters, along with dozens of interviews with investigators, former BRC workers, and the family of donors offer an unparalleled look at how one of America's major body brokers operated.

6:59 Thereds also reveal how little the government or the donors themselves understood about what was happening at the company, and show in graphic detail how a cadaver becomes a commodity. For six hundred seven dollars, BRC sold the liver of a public school janitor to a medical device company. The torso of a retired bank manager, bought by a Swiss research institute, fetched three thousand, one hundred ninety one dollars. A large Midwestern healthcare system paid sixty five dollars for two femoral arteries, one from a church minister, and the lower legs of a union activist were purchased by a Minnesota product development company for three hundred fifty dollars each for raw material, which is an awful thing to call the body of a deceased loved one.

7:42 The industry relies, in large part on people too poor to afford a funeral, offering to cremate a portion of each donated body for free. The disadvantaged are very important to the business. The vast majority of BRC donors came from neighborhoods where the median household income fell below the state average. Four out of five donors didn't graduate from college, about twice the ratio of the country as a whole. Before brokers accept a body, they typically present the donor or next of kin with a consent form.

8:10 These agreements are often written in technical language that many donors and relatives say they find hard to understand. The documents give brokers the right to dismember the dead, then sell or rent body parts to medical researchers and educators, often for hundreds or thousands of dollars. At BRC, a whole body sold for five thousand, eight hundred and ninety three dollars, records show since two thousand and four, when a federal health panel unsuccessfully called on the US government to regulate the industry, more than two thousand, three hundred and fifty seven body parts obtained by brokers from at least one thousand, six hundred and thirty eight people have ended up misused, abused, or desecrated, and those figures are believed to be vastly understated.

8:53 The extent of BRC's operations surprised even investigators who rated the Phoenix based company in two thousy fourteen. There agents discovered ten tons of frozen human remains one thousand, seven hundred and fifty five total body parts that included two hundred and eighty one heads, two hundred and forty one shoulders, three hundred and thirty seven legs, and ninety seven spines. Applying a state forfeiture law, authorities hauled away the contents of BRC's freezers, filling one hundred and forty two body bags.

9:22 One bag held parts from at least thirty six different people. The cazar was so large that officials struggled to properly handle the body parts. When plans to cremate the remain stalled, officials brought three walk in freezers to a military base and stacked the body bags inside, one on top of another. Parts from eight hundred and fifty one different people remained in those freezers for almost three years before they were cremated. The raid on BRC was part of a broader federal probe into the suspected practices of one of BRC's clients, Arthur Rathburn, a Detroit bodybroker Rathburn had pleaded not guilty to charges of defrauding customers.

9:58 During a twenty thirty in search of Rathburn's warehouse, federal agents found rotting body parts along with four preserved fetuses. It's not clear how Rathburn acquired the fetuses or what he planned to do with them. He was indicted for allegedly selling diseased body parts without warning buyers, and in twenty eighteen he was convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison. But we'll talk about Arthur Rathburn a little more later. In addition to Rathburn and others, BRC also sold body parts to U. S Army contractors for military experiments.

10:30 A Pentagon spokeswoman said BRC provided the body parts under false pretenses, misleading the Army that consent had been secured for donors to be used in destructive tests. Among the parts BRC sold for the army experiments were the heads and spines of Conrad Patrick and Leon Small, a seventy one year old retiree who had once managed a furniture factory. On the consent forms, Patrick and Small side each man checked a box stating that he did not wish to be used in military or destructive tests. But just days after Patrin and Small died, a BRC employee called their widows and persuaded them to amend the forms so their husbands could be used by the military.

11:06 The widows said the calls came during a traumatic time. I didn't understand what they were talking about, Donna Patrick said, but I said okay. Bodies or parts from at least twenty BRC donors were used without their consent in army experiments. Parts from Small and Patrick, however, were not. The military halted testing when it learned of the raid at BRC. The shoulders of both men were sent to a for profit surgical training company in Nevada. The widows, Karen Small and Donna Patrick, are among two dozen next of kin who said they were surprised to learn that BRC profited from a relative's donated body.

11:39 They prey on people that have no money, that are poor, that have no insurance, like us, Patrick said. Family members of some donors said BRC employees led them to believe body donation was regulated by federal and state authorities and that selling body parts is illegal. Based on those pitches, the relatives said they believed the remains wouldn't be sold. In truth, there are virtually no regulations on the body trade, which is why Rathburn was convicted of defrauding buyers and not of selling bodies.

12:07 It's a horrible thing, Karen Small said, it's sick. BRC owner Stephen Gore said in a statement that his employees took great care to ensure that donors and their families were well informed about the process. He would later acknowledge that he relied on books and the Internet for instruction on how to handle the bodies he sold. In twenty twelve, BRC hired lab Tech Kazimi. He earned twenty one dollars an hour before joining the company. His resume shows that he spent the previous decade working as a real estate agent, a waiter at Morton's Steakhouse, and a manager for an olive garden restaurant.

12:41 When he arrived at BRC, he was thirty five and had just graduated from Arizona State University with a degree in kinesiology the study of body movement. At ASU, he was a teaching assistant in an anatomy lab. In twenty thirteen, Kazimi starred in a BRC instructural video. It opens with a jarring title punctual waited for emphasis quote stripped cervical spine exclamation point unquote. As part of the instructional video, Kazimi and an assistant used a construction saw to help cut up a corpse. The video begins with a close up of Kazimi wearing a mask, gloves, goggles, and a surgical gown.

13:17 Then it pulls back to reveal a body face down on a table. The man's shoulders and arms have already been sheared off. The head lulls from side to side until Kazimi holds it still with a scalpel. He makes incisions along the neck and back, then peels away the man's skin and scalp. About seven minutes into the video, Kazimi picks up a construction saw. On this one, He says, of the cadaver, we're using a sturdy, thicker nine inch blade. You want to make sure that the blade is long enough to reach from ear to ear across the back.

13:48 In an interview, Kazimi described the video as clinical and quote not disrespectful to donors quote in any way. It was meant for internal use only. Kazimi also said that he did not know how BRC acquired donors or where body parts were shipped. In hindsight, he admits that using a motorized saw was wrong because it cannot be clean well enough to avoid spreading diseases. Would I do something like this now that I know better, no, Kazimi said, But at the time that's what was provided to me. Two retired investigators for the Arizona Attorney General said even veteran prosecutors recoiled when they viewed the twenty four minute video.

14:24 It was like a homemade horror movie, said Charles loftis a former assistant chief Agent. It's not how you treat human beings. You don't just throw them in a bunch of body bags and then throw them into a freezer like a pile of garbage. I couldn't sleep at night after seeing that, said Matthew Parker, another former agent with the Arizona Attorney General's Office. Parker retired with a disability post traumatic stress disorder related to his work on the case. It looked like a Junkyard chop shop where they're just ripping things apart, Parker said.

14:54 As for Kazimi, he also spent Saturdays at BRC's lab, teaching college students about to second On one Saturday in late twenty thirteen, Arizona State University junior Emily Glynn said she showed up for her first day at the lab. She was majoring in nutrition. I was really surprised when I got the internship because I didn't have any experience, said Glenn, then twenty. I just went in the first day and learned things on the job. That first day, under Kazimi's direction, interns used pliers to remove fingernails from donors.

15:24 Glenn recalled. I don't want to say it was barbaric, but it was weird. She said. One day, I found myself holding the hand of a seven year old woman, and I felt like I needed to apologize to her, to say I'm sorry. Neither Glenn nor Kazimi knew how the fingernails were used, they said, and invoices for that order could not be located, but fingernails from twenty two other donors were identified that were sold by BRC. They went to a North Carolina bioengineering research company called Sikon Intovation.

15:53 Saikon CEO Randy McClellan said he was unaware that BRC was rated by the FBI. He said his business helps companies study how products enter the bloodstream through fingernails, like new cosmetics that go on your skin, he said. On another Saturday, Glenn said, Kazimi gathered the interns around the body of a different elderly woman and said to her, Emily, you've never cut off a head before and everyone else has, so do you want to try it? And I'm like, okay, Glenn recalled. As she held the reciprocating saw.

16:20 Glenn said, Kazimi steadied her grip. It wasn't a full on chainsaw like you'd see in a horror movie, but it was a smaller version, Glenn said, and then I just went for it. I was expecting lots of blood, but there wasn't much to it. It came right off, she said of the woman's head. Kazimi said he doesn't remember helping an intern cut the head off or any other body parts. The Saturday sessions, he said, were more akin to lectures during which he showed interns various organs and other body parts. In her senior thesis, Glenn described her time at BRC differently.

16:49 Glenn wrote that she quote suits your dismembered legs using an oversized needle in twine, I stripped subcutaneous fat from the vertebrae of a cervical spine practice perfer forming crycotherotomy's incisions to the throat, and decapitated an elderly woman with what looked and sounded like a chainsaw from home depot. Not once did I receive formal training or instruction. Wow, this story is honestly horrendous. I won't blame you if you want to mail, but if you're still with me, well, let's keep pushing the envelope on human depravity.

17:22 This is kind of murdery after all, and it's time to move this story into its next phase. Middlemen. You see, BRC's customers were not always directly acquiring body parts from the broker for their own medical education, research, or training programs. According to invoices, some customers were middlemen brokers who resold or leased body parts originally donated to BRC. The consent forms gave BRC the discretion to choose its customers, but the forms did not state that the body parts could be resold by third parties.

17:53 In twenty twelve and twenty thirteen, BRC sold at least nine hundred and sixty one body parts uoting at least two hundred and twenty four human heads to three such middlemen. One was Inoved Institute LLC, a Chicago area medical lab provider that also supplies human body parts in aved was among BRC's best customers. It received thirty two shipments with two hundred and seventy seven body parts. Another was the previously mentioned Rathburn, a Detroit area broker who was subsequently sentenced to nine years in prison for defrauding his customers and knowingly passing bodies that were infected with HIV, hepatitis and other diseases.

18:33 God this is so dark. A third middleman was Biological Resource Center of Illinois, another Chicago area broker, better known as BRCIL. It received at least six hundred and fifty eight body parts from BRC. BRCIL operated independently from BRC, which was based in Arizona, but it was also rated by FBI agents as part of the federal probe into suspected fraud against donors and customers. No one from BRCIL was charged with a crime. One of the shoulders shipped to BRC dash IL came from the body of Robert Louis de Rozier, a casino security employee.

19:09 He died at age sixty four after a long battle with diabetes. His widow, Tama Derozer, lives in a mobile home park in Mohave Valley, Arizona. She said her husband donated his body hoping it might contribute to diabetes research. She did not expect anyone to make money selling his remains instead of helping with diabetes research. Robert de Rozer's remains were sold. That's morbid, his widow said. Greed is a terrible thing. Russell Parker Junior, who helped care for his dying brother Todd, said he was surprised to learn from a reporter that BRC sold Todd's right knee and offered to sell Todd's head.

19:45 Friends had recommended BRC, he said. When the company returned his brother's ashes, everything seemed all on the up and up and very professional. Shame on BRC for showing such disrespect, Parker said, that's so wrong. It's like trafficking. It is, and to make matters even grosser, thirty one percent of BRC's body donors were veterans. BRC's customers were not always directly acquiring body parts from the broker for their own medical education, research, or training programs. According to invoices, some customers were middlemen brokers who resold or leased body parts originally donated to BRC.

20:21 The consent forms gave BRC the discretion to choose its customers, but the forms did not state that the body parts could be resold by third parties. In twenty twelve and twenty thirteen, BRC sold at least nine hundred and sixty one body parts, including at least two hundred and twenty four human heads, to three such middlemen. In addition to the issue of middlemen, a companion of one donors cited another area of confusion BRC's use of the term tissue in sales pitches and on consent forms. Body brokers commonly talk about retrieving tissue from donors.

20:55 To the medical community, tissue means any part of the body from an order to a torso, but in interviews with Reuter's family, members of some donors said that they believed tissue meant only skin samples. Although BRC did sell skin, those sales represented just two percent of its business. In voices show Maureen Krueger said her partner of forty two years, Fidel Silva, told a female hospital worker in his final days that he wished to be cremated, and that's when she brought it up. Would you be interested in donating tissues?

21:26 Krueger recalled the way she understood it. Krueger said a few skin samples would be removed for research purposes. In return, BRC would cremate Silva for free. Silva, a sixty nine year old construction worker with a high school degree, peppered the hospice worker with questions. He asked, well, are you sure? What are they going to do? Kruger said he wanted to know, and that's when she assured him it was only body tissues. They only took samples. They didn't remove any organs or parts or anything.

21:54 It was just tissues, and that's when Fidel agreed. The conversation between Fidel's Silva and the hospice worker who pitched BRC took place in Hospice of HAVISU in Arizona. Its executive director, Dan Matthews said he could not discuss the matter due to patient privacy laws, but he said the hospice, which offers its clients options to donate their bodies to science. Quote removed that company BRC from our list of providers unquote upon hearing it was under investigation. Internal BRC records show the body broker removed Silva's head and his right and left arms from shoulder to hand.

22:29 Each was tagged with a tracking number and prepped for sale. Wow Kruger said, I didn't really realize they could do all that. I mean, I didn't understand that that's what would happen to Fidel at all. After the raid of BRC by federal and state agents, the body parts seized by authorities remained in limbo for almost three years. Their fate, detailed in confidential state logs, sworn statements, and photographs, has never been made public. Logistical problems began the day of the raid, said former agents Parker and Loftus.

22:58 Authorities were stunned to find so much human flesh inside BRC. They said, we expected two freezers and a few hundred pounds of body parts, said agent Loftus, who's now running for state representative. Instead, we found forty freezers with ten tons of bodies and parts. Agents entered in hazmat gear and took biopsies from each body part to preserve as evidence. Records show that the agents then placed one thousan seven hundred and fifty five parts into one hundred and forty two body bags. The bags were sent to ten local funeral homes so the remains could be cremated, but records and interviews show that BRC and others for whom it was storing body parts objected to their destruction.

23:38 They argued that the parts had a value of more than one million dollars. The cremation plans were put on hold, but authorities soon faced a pressing problem. According to former agents Loftis and Parker, funeral homes could refrigerate but not freeze the body parts, and the mortuaries began to complain that some of the parts were starting to thaw. As a solution, authorities obtained three walk and industrial freezers and installed them at a military base used by the Arizona National Guard. Then, bodybag by body bag, the mortuaries delivered the parts, and Loftus and Parker helped carry them to the freezers.

24:11 In an interview, agent Parker recalled feeling body parts sloshing around inside the bags as he moved them. Some bags leaked blood and stained his pants and shoes. The experience led to his PTSD diagnosis, he said. The spokeswoman for the Arizona Attorney General's office said the body parts were kept for federal authorities as quote evidence in an ongoing criminal investigation and prosecutions across the country. An FBI spokesman declined to comment. After almost three years in the containers, the remains were cremated and returned to the families that requested them.

24:44 In response to the case of Stephen Gore and the Human Chop Shop, the Arizona governor signed into law a bill that requires bodybrokers like BRC to be licensed and regularly inspected. The new law calls for brokers to follow a set of standards and to hiring meta doctor to supervise company practices. Although the law was adopted in twenty seventeen, as of twenty nineteen, it had yet to be enforced, and the state Health Department still needed to create specific rules for brokers. It was unclear when they would.

25:14 They do not have an anticipated date of completion at this time. Many details of the grim scene encountered by the FBI were revealed in a civil suit filing by thirty three plaintiffs whose loved one's bodies were donated to BRC under the guise that they would be used for scientific purposes. In a declaration contained in the civil Lawsuits court file, former Phoenix FBI special agent Mark Kuinar said he quote personally observed various unsettling scenes while inside Biological Resource Center. Many of the body parts he saw were piled on top of one another, with no apparent identification to indicate what bodies they came from or to whom they belonged.

25:56 He said. Agents also found quote infected heads, a small woman's head sewn onto a large male torso and hanging on the wall like Frankenstein. Agent Kwiner said he saw large male torsos with limbs and genitalia removed, buckets and coolers with various body parts, including a bucket of heads, arms, and legs, an entire freezer filled only with penises, body parts piled on top of each other throughout the facility with no apparent identification, steel freezers with body parts frozen with no apparent identification.

26:28 Regarding the large male torso with the small woman's heads sewn to it, it remains unclear why the now shuttered center sowed the different body parts together. But Philip Gayet, a former bodybroker who for six years collected dead bodies from funeral homes, recovered body parts for transplant, and sold them to third parties, offered a surprising theory. Many families who can't afford to cremate their relatives donate various body parts to body donation centers like the one Gayete ran or BRC in exchange for their cremation and the subsequent return of the ashes.

27:00 The only body parts that turn to ash are a person's bones, so the Arizona center may have taken away too many of a dead person's bones and was trying to sew together different people's parts to make up a full body's worth of ashes. Oh my god. So they take your loved one's body and promise to cremate and send you the ashes in return, But they sell too much of your loved one's body, so they make a literal meat puppet out of a piece of your loved one's body and the head of a stranger, or parts of several strangers.

27:30 I mean, who knows how many times this sort of thing was done. And then they cremate the meat puppet and send you the bone ash, but you don't actually know if that ash contains some or all or any of your relative Holy crap. I mean to me, this takes desecration of a corpse to a whole other level. I'm not making light of this at all, of course, but I mean it might be preferable that a body be fed whole to wild dogs, as opposed to chopped into pieces and then sewn back together with parts of a stranger or various other strangers.

28:04 And then those ashes are sent to your loved ones. And they don't even know if the ashes on the mantel place actually belong to the person they're supposed to. I mean, they think they know, but they don't. This is just horrendous. I suggest not thinking too hard on the subject, because the implications just only get worse, they don't get better. And in fact, Philip Gayette has more to say on this particular subject of the large male torso that was sewn together with a small female head, like something from a nightmare that even Hollywood could barely dream up.

28:36 Here's Gayette's theory. He says, if I knew that a family wanted their ashes back. I'd be doing limited recovery of internal organs or tissues, so they would get ninety percent of that bone ash back. But other people they take everything. They'll take the arms, the shoulders, the spine, the hip, and basically all the family would be left with is maybe a cups worth of ashes from a leftover ribcage or something. So I think the family wanted the ashes, and BRC took some body parts that they didn't have to get back just to make up the volume.

29:05 That would be my assumption, because there's no other reason to go through that work of trying to put the body parts back together again, or not put the body parts back together again. This is seven speaking now, but combining the body parts of one person and another. Almost surprisingly, Philip Gayette did wrap up his theorizing about why more than one person's dead body might be stitched together into a real life horror movie prop by saying it's not normal. Thank god for that. Gayette also said that his business was entirely legal, and that relatives had explicitly given permission for him to take the parts of their loved one's bodies for research.

29:43 Gayette's clients included private universities and researchers that needed specific body parts for their teaching exercises. They would require various body parts, from brains to skin graphs to various tissues to test out new medical technologies and carry out research of the human body for science while his business as a whole was legal. In two thousand and nine, Gayette was sentenced to eight years in federal prison for falsifying the medical records of some cadavers that he wanted to sell for transplant.

30:11 He served six and a half years, during which time he wrote a book about his experiences titled Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Bones, with the S in Bones a dollar sign. I don't regret being in the business, said Gayette, who now works as a land surveyor in southern California. I regret some of the things I did, obviously, but the business was interesting, and I think life should be interesting. Let's move back to the civil suit filed against BRC and Stephen Gore by thirty three loved ones of people whose bodies were donated to Biological Resource Center.

30:45 A twenty thirteen price list included in the civil court filing indicates that a whole body with no shoulders or head could be purchased for twenty nine hundred dollars. A torso with the head was twenty four hundred dollars. A whole spine nine one hundred and fifty, a whole leg eleven hundred dollars, a whole foot four hundred and fifty, a knee three seventy five apeld us four hundred. More than five thousand bodies in total were donated to BRC, and, as just stated in the price list, body parts sold for several hundred dollars, while fully intact bodies or torsos and heads could cost anywhere from twenty four hundred to six thousand, and Body brokering remains a legal but virtually unregulated business in the United States.

31:28 The civil lawsuit against Stephen Gore laid out many damning claims. Here are four of the most stomach churning. Number one, the lawsuit says bodies were sold to the Department of Defense as quote crash test dummies. According to court documents, Stephen Gore sold donated bodies to the Department of Defense for weapons testing. Jim Stofer contracted BRC after his mother passed away from Alzheimer's disease and was assured by BRC that her body would be used for Alzheimer's research. Doris Stoufer's hand was removed, cremated, and returned to her family, while her body was sold to the US Army to study damage done by roadside bombs.

32:06 Army officials said BRC gave them heavily redacted consent forms that said they had permission to use the bodies for testing. Those bodies were literally used as crash test dummies, which meant they were used in experiments involving exposure to destructive forces, for example impacts, crashes, ballistic injuries, and blasts. The civil lawsuit States number two. After the twenty fourteen FBI raid, Stephen Gore released a statement informing the public that he and his staff had cooperated fully with investigators and had answered questions without counsel.

32:37 Gore, the owner of BRC and a former Florida insurance agent with no medical training, said he had concerns the public might draw the wrong conclusions. After the Attorney General issued a statement without providing details. As per the Attorney General's message to the public, little information has been made available. This lack of information has led many to speculate and make incorrect conclusions. Gore's statement read what incorrect because they couldn't even imagine how horrific the truth actually was.

33:06 Is that what you mean, Stephen Gore? Number three, the FBI found ten tons of frozen remains. We've already gone through a lot of the specifics of that massive cache of human bodies, so I won't bludgeon you with them again. But yes, ten tons of frozen remains. And number four Gore was tied to a Michigan body dealer named Arthur Rathburn. I mentioned Rathburn briefly in part one of this story. It's time to return to him now. US customs agents caught Rathburn at the US Canada border secretly carrying ten human heads.

33:41 One of the heads had been sold by BRC to Rathburn. FBI agents were eventually able to trace two hundred and fifty body parts purchased by Rathburn back to Gore and BRC. Rathburn bought bodies and body parts from Gore, then rented and sold them for medical training at conventions and seminars. He also sees secretly sold body parts from clients he'd been paid to cremate. An FBI agent was told by his employees that the families of the deceased who asked for cremated remains to be returned sometimes got quote something else.

34:13 In some cases, Rathburn knowingly rented and sold diseased body parts, including those infected with HIV and hepatitis. Body parts he purchased from Gore and then sold without telling the buyers they'd be exposed to these serious contagious diseases. According to government documents, Rathburn supplied unwitting medical educators with body parts infected with HIV and hepatitis at least one hundred and twenty times between nineteen ninety seven and twenty thirteen. That is awful. Rathburn also used Delta cargo to ship body parts.

34:46 He was convicted of fraud and shipping hazardous materials and sentenced to nine years in federal prison. Federal prosecutor John Neil called Rathburn quote deplorable unquote. Arizona has been a largely regular toy free zone for the body parts industry. At least four body donation companies are operating in Arizona, in addition to a nonprofit cryogenics company that freezes people after they die with the intent of one day bringing them back to life. Since his death in two thousand and two, the cryogenics company Alcore has been home to the frozen head of baseball legend Ted Williams.

35:22 According to a two thousand and nine ESPN article, Larry Johnson says in the book Frozen, My Journey into the World of Cryonics, Deception, and Death, that he watched an Alcore official swing a monkey wrench at Ted williams frozen severed head to try to remove a tunican stuck to it. The first swing accidentally struck the head, and the second knocked the tunican loose. Now this should outrage every Red Sox fan, every baseball fan, and frankly, like the rest of this horror house shit show, it should all outrage any human being.

35:58 But I digrest. Let's move away from the desecration of the corpse of the greatest hitter in baseball history and instead get back to Stephen Gore, owner of the Human Chop Shop. Gore's attorney, Clark Derek, said his client always attempted to do right by his donors. Sure, said Gore in a statement quote, at some point the business grew exponentially, we became shorthanded. We cut some corners, and for that I apologize and make amends. In October twenty fifteen, Gore tearfully pleaded guilty to conducting an illegal enterprise after accusations that he had provided vendors with contaminated human tissue and used body parts in ways that the donors had not permitted.

36:41 Gore's highest level of education was high school, and he did not have any licenses or certifications applicable to the body donation program operations. In a letter to Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Warren Granville before his December fifteenth sentencing, Gore wrote that he felt overwhelmed, but that he was working in the industry with quote no formal regulations unquote to reference for guidance. In his pre sentencing letter to Judge Granville, Gore wrote, I could have been more open about the process of donation on the brochure we put in public view when deciding which donors could be eligible to donate.

37:16 I should have hired a medical director rather than relying on medical knowledge from books or the internet. Okay, I want you to hear that one more time. The guy who ran the business accepting donations of the bodies of all these people's loved ones, who oversaw cutting up those bodies and shipping them all over the country for medical, educational and other uses. Literally said in a letter to a judge, I should have hired a medical director rather than relying on medical knowledge from books or on the internet.

37:47 You know what that means, right? Gore was watching fucking YouTube videos, then whipping out the band saw and hacking up Grandpa, and all too often Graham was undereducated, living in poverty, and likely to be a veteran. It's horrific, but hey, they got him right. Something horrible must have happened to him, right. Stephen Gore, the man who used YouTube to slice and dice dead loved ones and sell them for profit, was sentenced to one year of deferred of deferred jail time, four years probation, and was ordered to pay one hundred and twenty one thousand dollars in restitution.

38:27 The man with a million dollars worth of arms and legs and heads and penises in his freezer when the FBI rated his shop was given functionally no sentence and ordered to pay one hundred and twenty one thousand dollars. There are people in federal prison for years for selling a small amount of drugs at a street level, and this guy running a multi million dollar operation where he was defrauding people out of their loved ones remains, cutting them up with a YouTube education, often selling bodies that were infected with HIV or hepatitis to unknowing, well meaning medical educators.

39:03 This guy gets no sentence in one hundred and twenty one thousand dollars. Fine. What in the ever loving heck is going on here? I mean, it's not as though I thought the laws of our country were morally sufficient to begin with. But jays Louiz, if this doesn't make you shake your head, I don't know what does. So Yeah, one hundred and twenty one thousand dollars fine, no jail time, a little bit of probation. He did get sued in twenty seventeen, as I referred to by thirty three family members and loved ones of the people whose corpses he desecrated for money.

39:33 And let's not be confused about what was going on here. That's what going on. He was desecrating corpses for money, stitching together meat puppets, storing freezers full of Genitalia popsicles. I mean, just disgusting stuff. No jail time, gets a fine, but he does get sued by those thirty three family members and loved ones. And what comes of that? They win, Thank goodness, right, they win to the tune of fifty eight million dollars for thirty three people. That averages out to one one point seventy six million per person.

40:02 I know some loved ones were awarded as much as five million dollars. Here's the only problem. Gore pled guilty in twenty fourteen, was sentenced in twenty fifteen. The loved ones won the lawsuit in twenty seventeen. And you know what that means. Stephen Gore didn't have the money to pay them. He'd been out of business, he'd paid big fines, So no justice after all. What a cheery and unfortunately unsurprising thought. I sometimes feel guilty for being unable to offer all of you more happy endings.

40:31 But I guess at the end of the day, you know you're listening to kind of murdery and the meanings in the name there. That's often how it goes. This is not chicken soup. For the soul to be sure, I would like to take a moment to remind you of the free three digit lifeline number nine eight eight that you can call to receive immediate counseling for substance use, mental health or suicidal thoughts. Please, if you struggle or have struggled with any of these, take a moment and program nine eight eight.

41:00 It's free. It's a lifeline number where you can get immediate counseling. Program it into your phone, and if you are in a cute crisis, please do call it. Call nine eight eight and never forget that the world is a better place with you in it. Also, if you're not in a cute crisis, because I'm not qualified to help you if you are. But if you're not in acute crisis and you'd just like to connect with someone, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. Kindomurdery at gmail dot com or at kind of Murdery on all social media.

41:27 You can also call the kind of Murdery hotline eight eight eight Murdery. That's eight eight eight six eight seven three three seven nine or eighty eight murder the letter why you can call the kind of Murdery hotline. You can connect with me that way, and what I would really love is if you would call a kind of murdery hotline and tell me a story about something kind of murdery that happened to you. Now, before I sign off, I'd like to say again sending love and prayers to Jerry and Tracy Polly from Hillbilly Horror Stories.

41:55 Jerry is facing some serious health challenges right now. Jerry, we love you, We're praying for you, and there has been a GoFundMe started to help Jerry with medical expenses. I will post the link to that go fund me in the show notes. If you are able, I would very much appreciate it if you would consider donating to the GoFundMe for Jerry Polly from Hillbilly Horror Stories, who has been a wonderful mentor and friend to me and so many others in the podcasting community in the state of Kentucky and frankly around the world.

42:23 Jerry really is one of the best people I know, and if anyone deserves to have his friends step up for him in a time of need, it's Jerry Polly, So please do. If you can consider donating to Jerry's GoFundMe. You'll find that link in the show notes. Thank you so much for being here with me today. I look forward to joining you again on Thursday. Until then, I'm Zevan Odleberg and this has been kind, murdery,