American Monsters: Stephen Gore
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Zevon Odelberg is a true crime podcast host and disability advocate. Zevon has cerebral palsy and he wants Kinda Murdery to be welcoming community for people with disabilities and for people living with challenges of any kind. Life can be hard, but being together makes it better.
Speaker 1: Warning. Kind of Murdery contains adult themes, explicit language, and
Speaker 1: descriptions of violence. It is not suitable for anyone, and
Speaker 1: we recommend you stop listening now. Hello everyone, and welcome
Speaker 1: to Kind of Murdery, a true crime podcast that's mostly
Speaker 1: about murder and always about the strange and compelling stories
Speaker 1: that arise when the pathless traveled twists to darkness and
Speaker 1: those who walk its shadows surrender to violence and moral corruption.
Speaker 1: We have a perilous journey ahead, so thank you for
Speaker 1: lending me your courage and good company. Hello, and thanks
Speaker 1: for being here. I'm your host, Zevan Odleberg, and this
Speaker 1: is kind of Murdery. Remember if you've got a kind
Speaker 1: of Murdery story to tell me, please do call eighty
Speaker 1: eight Murdery. That's eighty eight six eight seven three three
Speaker 1: seven nine eighty eight murder the letter Why. Beginning in
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, a man from Adison, Illinois, began
Speaker 1: buying seven lottery tickets a week for a lottery that
Speaker 1: was then called the Little Lotto. He bought the seven
Speaker 1: tickets so he'd have one for each day of the week.
Speaker 1: He always played the same numbers one, six, twelve, fourteen
Speaker 1: and twenty five, a combination of his football and basketball
Speaker 1: jerseys and the numbers of his heroes. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine, he won a cool fifty thousand dollars, and
Speaker 1: on June seventh, twenty sixteen, he won one million dollars.
Speaker 1: This man's name, well, if you guess Larry Lotto, you'd
Speaker 1: be wrong, but you've got the right idea. His name
Speaker 1: is Larry Gambles. That's right. He made one million, fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars gambling, and his name is Larry Gambles. And
Speaker 1: if his was the only story you'd ever heard, you
Speaker 1: might think that letting your last name guide your life
Speaker 1: choices seems like a pretty good idea. After all, Larry
Speaker 1: Gambles gambled and he won big. But slaw your role there, Maverick,
Speaker 1: because I'm about to tell you the story of Stephen Gore. Now,
Speaker 1: the MPAA, that's the Motion Picture Association of America, the
Speaker 1: folks responsible for rating our movies, defines Gore as quote
Speaker 1: surpassing strong, bloody and or sadistic and or sexualized and
Speaker 1: or stylized violence. In this case, that definition is spot on,
Speaker 1: and you're about to find out why. Also, while we're
Speaker 1: on the subject of definitions, ask yourself as you listen
Speaker 1: to this story, what is the definition of justice? And
Speaker 1: just what kind of absolute bizarro world do sentencing guidelines
Speaker 1: come from. I should mention that a twenty seventeen Reuter's
Speaker 1: article entitled a business where human bodies were butchered, packaged,
Speaker 1: and sold by John Schiffman, Reid Levison and Brian grow
Speaker 1: was particularly valuable in putting this episode together. And as always,
Speaker 1: my sources are in the show notes. And so if
Speaker 1: you're ready, I suggest that you put your personal items
Speaker 1: underneath the seat in front of you, stow your carry
Speaker 1: on in the overhead compartment. Let go of the worries
Speaker 1: of the day, but be sure your seat belt is fastened.
Speaker 1: There's turbulence expected ahead. Kind of murders. Stephen Gored and
Speaker 1: the Human chop Shop starts now. Warning this story contains
Speaker 1: graphic content and it is not for the faint of
Speaker 1: heart or stomach. The Biological Resource Center or BRC was
Speaker 1: a for profit body donation company operated by Stephen Gore
Speaker 1: from two thousand and four until it was raided by
Speaker 1: the FBI in twenty fourteen. The company was housed in
Speaker 1: a nine thousand square foot building once occupied by an
Speaker 1: insurance agency. It was a one story facility near two
Speaker 1: interstate highways and the Phoenix, Arizona Airport. From two thousand
Speaker 1: and five until early twenty fourteen, court records show that
Speaker 1: Biological Resource Center BRC received about five thousand human bodies
Speaker 1: and distributed more than twenty thousand body parts. BRC accepted
Speaker 1: donations of bodies after people died. The company gave donors
Speaker 1: in their families free transportation services to pick up the body,
Speaker 1: plus free cremation. One of the problems was that some
Speaker 1: families thought that a body donation meant their loved one's
Speaker 1: bodies were being given to charity to help with disease research.
Speaker 1: Some mistakenly thought the Biological Resource Center would be donating
Speaker 1: their loved one's organs, not knowing that organ donation and
Speaker 1: body donation are not the same thing. Loved ones were
Speaker 1: not aware that BRC dismembered and sold the parts to
Speaker 1: various middlemen for profit. And that is only the beginning. Again,
Speaker 1: I'll warn you this story contains graphic content and is
Speaker 1: not for the faint of heart or stomach. Phoenix, Arizona
Speaker 1: Sam Kazimi stood over the old man's corpse. Nearby lay pliers,
Speaker 1: a scalpel, and a motorized soad designed to cut drywall
Speaker 1: and pipe. On a busy day, Kazimi might harvest body
Speaker 1: parts from five or six people who donated their bodies
Speaker 1: to science. On this day in November twenty thirteen. The
Speaker 1: corpse before Kazimi typified the donors who gave there remains
Speaker 1: to his employer, Biological Resource Center. The man was a
Speaker 1: retired factory worker with a ninth grade education. He lived
Speaker 1: with his wife in a mobile home in Mohave Valley, Arizona,
Speaker 1: and had died six days earlier, age seventy five. His
Speaker 1: name was Conrad Patrick, but after he died and his
Speaker 1: body was donated, Patrick became a commodity known by the
Speaker 1: company's initials and a number BRC one three one one
Speaker 1: two one zero three. A review of thousands of internal
Speaker 1: BRC records and confidential law enforcement documents containing profiles of
Speaker 1: Patrick and two thousand, two hundred and eighty other donors
Speaker 1: reveals invoices and inventories for thousands of body parts harvested
Speaker 1: from these people. They show how their bodies were dissected,
Speaker 1: which body parts were sent ware and why the buyers
Speaker 1: obtained them. Kazimi helped cut up and package Patrick into
Speaker 1: seven pieces. BRC shipped Patrick's left foot to a Chicago
Speaker 1: area or the pedic Lab. His left shoulder was sent
Speaker 1: to a Las Vegas company that holds surgical seminars. His
Speaker 1: head and his spine went to a project run by
Speaker 1: the US Army, and Patrick's external reproductive organs were sent
Speaker 1: to a local university. His right foot and left knee
Speaker 1: were placed in the company's freezers, where they became part
Speaker 1: of BRC's million dollar inventory of flesh and bone. America's
Speaker 1: body trade, a little known and virtually unregulated industry, includes
Speaker 1: businesses like BRC, which call themselves non transplant tissue banks.
Speaker 1: They are also known as bodybrokers. The operations can resemble
Speaker 1: meat packing plants. At BRC, body parts from heads to
Speaker 1: fingernails were harvested and sold on Saturday mornings. Kazimi taught
Speaker 1: college students how to dismember cadavers in the company lab.
Speaker 1: He also starred in a grizzly training video demonstrating how
Speaker 1: to carve out a man's spine using a motorized saw.
Speaker 1: Documents obtained by Reuters, along with dozens of interviews with investigators,
Speaker 1: former BRC workers, and the family of donors offer an
Speaker 1: unparalleled look at how one of America's major body brokers operated.
Speaker 1: Thereds also reveal how little the government or the donors
Speaker 1: themselves understood about what was happening at the company, and
Speaker 1: show in graphic detail how a cadaver becomes a commodity.
Speaker 1: For six hundred seven dollars, BRC sold the liver of
Speaker 1: a public school janitor to a medical device company. The
Speaker 1: torso of a retired bank manager, bought by a Swiss
Speaker 1: research institute, fetched three thousand, one hundred ninety one dollars.
Speaker 1: A large Midwestern healthcare system paid sixty five dollars for
Speaker 1: two femoral arteries, one from a church minister, and the
Speaker 1: lower legs of a union activist were purchased by a
Speaker 1: Minnesota product development company for three hundred fifty dollars each
Speaker 1: for raw material, which is an awful thing to call
Speaker 1: the body of a deceased loved one. The industry relies,
Speaker 1: in large part on people too poor to afford a funeral,
Speaker 1: offering to cremate a portion of each donated body for free.
Speaker 1: The disadvantaged are very important to the business. The vast
Speaker 1: majority of BRC donors came from neighborhoods where the median
Speaker 1: household income fell below the state average. Four out of
Speaker 1: five donors didn't graduate from college, about twice the ratio
Speaker 1: of the country as a whole. Before brokers accept a body,
Speaker 1: they typically present the donor or next of kin with
Speaker 1: a consent form. These agreements are often written in technical
Speaker 1: language that many donors and relatives say they find hard
Speaker 1: to understand. The documents give brokers the right to dismember
Speaker 1: the dead, then sell or rent body parts to medical
Speaker 1: researchers and educators, often for hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Speaker 1: At BRC, a whole body sold for five thousand, eight
Speaker 1: hundred and ninety three dollars, records show since two thousand
Speaker 1: and four, when a federal health panel unsuccessfully called on
Speaker 1: the US government to regulate the industry, more than two thousand,
Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty seven body parts obtained by brokers
Speaker 1: from at least one thousand, six hundred and thirty eight
Speaker 1: people have ended up misused, abused, or desecrated, and those
Speaker 1: figures are believed to be vastly understated. The extent of
Speaker 1: BRC's operations surprised even investigators who rated the Phoenix based
Speaker 1: company in two thousy fourteen. There agents discovered ten tons
Speaker 1: of frozen human remains one thousand, seven hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: five total body parts that included two hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: one heads, two hundred and forty one shoulders, three hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty seven legs, and ninety seven spines. Applying a
Speaker 1: state forfeiture law, authorities hauled away the contents of BRC's freezers,
Speaker 1: filling one hundred and forty two body bags. One bag
Speaker 1: held parts from at least thirty six different people. The
Speaker 1: cazar was so large that officials struggled to properly handle
Speaker 1: the body parts. When plans to cremate the remain stalled,
Speaker 1: officials brought three walk in freezers to a military base
Speaker 1: and stacked the body bags inside, one on top of another.
Speaker 1: Parts from eight hundred and fifty one different people remained
Speaker 1: in those freezers for almost three years before they were cremated.
Speaker 1: The raid on BRC was part of a broader federal
Speaker 1: probe into the suspected practices of one of BRC's clients,
Speaker 1: Arthur Rathburn, a Detroit bodybroker Rathburn had pleaded not guilty
Speaker 1: to charges of defrauding customers. During a twenty thirty in
Speaker 1: search of Rathburn's warehouse, federal agents found rotting body parts
Speaker 1: along with four preserved fetuses. It's not clear how Rathburn
Speaker 1: acquired the fetuses or what he planned to do with them.
Speaker 1: He was indicted for allegedly selling diseased body parts without
Speaker 1: warning buyers, and in twenty eighteen he was convicted and
Speaker 1: sentenced to nine years in prison. But we'll talk about
Speaker 1: Arthur Rathburn a little more later. In addition to Rathburn
Speaker 1: and others, BRC also sold body parts to U. S
Speaker 1: Army contractors for military experiments. A Pentagon spokeswoman said BRC
Speaker 1: provided the body parts under false pretenses, misleading the Army
Speaker 1: that consent had been secured for donors to be used
Speaker 1: in destructive tests. Among the parts BRC sold for the
Speaker 1: army experiments were the heads and spines of Conrad Patrick
Speaker 1: and Leon Small, a seventy one year old retiree who
Speaker 1: had once managed a furniture factory. On the consent forms,
Speaker 1: Patrick and Small side each man checked a box stating
Speaker 1: that he did not wish to be used in military
Speaker 1: or destructive tests. But just days after Patrin and Small died,
Speaker 1: a BRC employee called their widows and persuaded them to
Speaker 1: amend the forms so their husbands could be used by
Speaker 1: the military. The widows said the calls came during a
Speaker 1: traumatic time. I didn't understand what they were talking about,
Speaker 1: Donna Patrick said, but I said okay. Bodies or parts
Speaker 1: from at least twenty BRC donors were used without their
Speaker 1: consent in army experiments. Parts from Small and Patrick, however,
Speaker 1: were not. The military halted testing when it learned of
Speaker 1: the raid at BRC. The shoulders of both men were
Speaker 1: sent to a for profit surgical training company in Nevada.
Speaker 1: The widows, Karen Small and Donna Patrick, are among two
Speaker 1: dozen next of kin who said they were surprised to
Speaker 1: learn that BRC profited from a relative's donated body. They
Speaker 1: prey on people that have no money, that are poor,
Speaker 1: that have no insurance, like us, Patrick said. Family members
Speaker 1: of some donors said BRC employees led them to believe
Speaker 1: body donation was regulated by federal and state authorities and
Speaker 1: that selling body parts is illegal. Based on those pitches,
Speaker 1: the relatives said they believed the remains wouldn't be sold.
Speaker 1: In truth, there are virtually no regulations on the body trade,
Speaker 1: which is why Rathburn was convicted of defrauding buyers and
Speaker 1: not of selling bodies. It's a horrible thing, Karen Small said,
Speaker 1: it's sick. BRC owner Stephen Gore said in a statement
Speaker 1: that his employees took great care to ensure that donors
Speaker 1: and their families were well informed about the process. He
Speaker 1: would later acknowledge that he relied on books and the
Speaker 1: Internet for instruction on how to handle the bodies he sold.
Speaker 1: In twenty twelve, BRC hired lab Tech Kazimi. He earned
Speaker 1: twenty one dollars an hour before joining the company. His
Speaker 1: resume shows that he spent the previous decade working as
Speaker 1: a real estate agent, a waiter at Morton's Steakhouse, and
Speaker 1: a manager for an olive garden restaurant. When he arrived
Speaker 1: at BRC, he was thirty five and had just graduated
Speaker 1: from Arizona State University with a degree in kinesiology the
Speaker 1: study of body movement. At ASU, he was a teaching
Speaker 1: assistant in an anatomy lab. In twenty thirteen, Kazimi starred
Speaker 1: in a BRC instructural video. It opens with a jarring
Speaker 1: title punctual waited for emphasis quote stripped cervical spine exclamation
Speaker 1: point unquote. As part of the instructional video, Kazimi and
Speaker 1: an assistant used a construction saw to help cut up
Speaker 1: a corpse. The video begins with a close up of
Speaker 1: Kazimi wearing a mask, gloves, goggles, and a surgical gown.
Speaker 1: Then it pulls back to reveal a body face down
Speaker 1: on a table. The man's shoulders and arms have already
Speaker 1: been sheared off. The head lulls from side to side
Speaker 1: until Kazimi holds it still with a scalpel. He makes
Speaker 1: incisions along the neck and back, then peels away the
Speaker 1: man's skin and scalp. About seven minutes into the video,
Speaker 1: Kazimi picks up a construction saw. On this one, He says,
Speaker 1: of the cadaver, we're using a sturdy, thicker nine inch blade.
Speaker 1: You want to make sure that the blade is long
Speaker 1: enough to reach from ear to ear across the back.
Speaker 1: In an interview, Kazimi described the video as clinical and
Speaker 1: quote not disrespectful to donors quote in any way. It
Speaker 1: was meant for internal use only. Kazimi also said that
Speaker 1: he did not know how BRC acquired donors or where
Speaker 1: body parts were shipped. In hindsight, he admits that using
Speaker 1: a motorized saw was wrong because it cannot be clean
Speaker 1: well enough to avoid spreading diseases. Would I do something
Speaker 1: like this now that I know better, no, Kazimi said,
Speaker 1: But at the time that's what was provided to me.
Speaker 1: Two retired investigators for the Arizona Attorney General said even
Speaker 1: veteran prosecutors recoiled when they viewed the twenty four minute video.
Speaker 1: It was like a homemade horror movie, said Charles loftis
Speaker 1: a former assistant chief Agent. It's not how you treat
Speaker 1: human beings. You don't just throw them in a bunch
Speaker 1: of body bags and then throw them into a freezer
Speaker 1: like a pile of garbage. I couldn't sleep at night
Speaker 1: after seeing that, said Matthew Parker, another former agent with
Speaker 1: the Arizona Attorney General's Office. Parker retired with a disability
Speaker 1: post traumatic stress disorder related to his work on the case.
Speaker 1: It looked like a Junkyard chop shop where they're just
Speaker 1: ripping things apart, Parker said. As for Kazimi, he also
Speaker 1: spent Saturdays at BRC's lab, teaching college students about to
Speaker 1: second On one Saturday in late twenty thirteen, Arizona State
Speaker 1: University junior Emily Glynn said she showed up for her
Speaker 1: first day at the lab. She was majoring in nutrition.
Speaker 1: I was really surprised when I got the internship because
Speaker 1: I didn't have any experience, said Glenn, then twenty. I
Speaker 1: just went in the first day and learned things on
Speaker 1: the job. That first day, under Kazimi's direction, interns used
Speaker 1: pliers to remove fingernails from donors. Glenn recalled. I don't
Speaker 1: want to say it was barbaric, but it was weird.
Speaker 1: She said. One day, I found myself holding the hand
Speaker 1: of a seven year old woman, and I felt like
Speaker 1: I needed to apologize to her, to say I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Neither Glenn nor Kazimi knew how the fingernails were used,
Speaker 1: they said, and invoices for that order could not be located,
Speaker 1: but fingernails from twenty two other donors were identified that
Speaker 1: were sold by BRC. They went to a North Carolina
Speaker 1: bioengineering research company called Sikon Intovation. Saikon CEO Randy McClellan
Speaker 1: said he was unaware that BRC was rated by the FBI.
Speaker 1: He said his business helps companies study how products enter
Speaker 1: the bloodstream through fingernails, like new cosmetics that go on
Speaker 1: your skin, he said. On another Saturday, Glenn said, Kazimi
Speaker 1: gathered the interns around the body of a different elderly
Speaker 1: woman and said to her, Emily, you've never cut off
Speaker 1: a head before and everyone else has, so do you
Speaker 1: want to try it? And I'm like, okay, Glenn recalled.
Speaker 1: As she held the reciprocating saw. Glenn said, Kazimi steadied
Speaker 1: her grip. It wasn't a full on chainsaw like you'd
Speaker 1: see in a horror movie, but it was a smaller version,
Speaker 1: Glenn said, and then I just went for it. I
Speaker 1: was expecting lots of blood, but there wasn't much to it.
Speaker 1: It came right off, she said of the woman's head.
Speaker 1: Kazimi said he doesn't remember helping an intern cut the
Speaker 1: head off or any other body parts. The Saturday sessions,
Speaker 1: he said, were more akin to lectures during which he
Speaker 1: showed interns various organs and other body parts. In her
Speaker 1: senior thesis, Glenn described her time at BRC differently. Glenn
Speaker 1: wrote that she quote suits your dismembered legs using an
Speaker 1: oversized needle in twine, I stripped subcutaneous fat from the
Speaker 1: vertebrae of a cervical spine practice perfer forming crycotherotomy's incisions
Speaker 1: to the throat, and decapitated an elderly woman with what
Speaker 1: looked and sounded like a chainsaw from home depot. Not
Speaker 1: once did I receive formal training or instruction. Wow, this
Speaker 1: story is honestly horrendous. I won't blame you if you
Speaker 1: want to mail, but if you're still with me, well,
Speaker 1: let's keep pushing the envelope on human depravity. This is
Speaker 1: kind of murdery after all, and it's time to move
Speaker 1: this story into its next phase. Middlemen. You see, BRC's
Speaker 1: customers were not always directly acquiring body parts from the
Speaker 1: broker for their own medical education, research, or training programs.
Speaker 1: According to invoices, some customers were middlemen brokers who resold
Speaker 1: or leased body parts originally donated to BRC. The consent
Speaker 1: forms gave BRC the discretion to choose its customers, but
Speaker 1: the forms did not state that the body parts could
Speaker 1: be resold by third parties. In twenty twelve and twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: BRC sold at least nine hundred and sixty one body
Speaker 1: parts uoting at least two hundred and twenty four human
Speaker 1: heads to three such middlemen. One was Inoved Institute LLC,
Speaker 1: a Chicago area medical lab provider that also supplies human
Speaker 1: body parts in aved was among BRC's best customers. It
Speaker 1: received thirty two shipments with two hundred and seventy seven
Speaker 1: body parts. Another was the previously mentioned Rathburn, a Detroit
Speaker 1: area broker who was subsequently sentenced to nine years in
Speaker 1: prison for defrauding his customers and knowingly passing bodies that
Speaker 1: were infected with HIV, hepatitis and other diseases. God this
Speaker 1: is so dark. A third middleman was Biological Resource Center
Speaker 1: of Illinois, another Chicago area broker, better known as BRCIL.
Speaker 1: It received at least six hundred and fifty eight body
Speaker 1: parts from BRC. BRCIL operated independently from BRC, which was
Speaker 1: based in Arizona, but it was also rated by FBI
Speaker 1: agents as part of the federal probe into suspected fraud
Speaker 1: against donors and customers. No one from BRCIL was charged
Speaker 1: with a crime. One of the shoulders shipped to BRC
Speaker 1: dash IL came from the body of Robert Louis de Rozier,
Speaker 1: a casino security employee. He died at age sixty four
Speaker 1: after a long battle with diabetes. His widow, Tama Derozer,
Speaker 1: lives in a mobile home park in Mohave Valley, Arizona.
Speaker 1: She said her husband donated his body hoping it might
Speaker 1: contribute to diabetes research. She did not expect anyone to
Speaker 1: make money selling his remains instead of helping with diabetes research.
Speaker 1: Robert de Rozer's remains were sold. That's morbid, his widow said.
Speaker 1: Greed is a terrible thing. Russell Parker Junior, who helped
Speaker 1: care for his dying brother Todd, said he was surprised
Speaker 1: to learn from a reporter that BRC sold Todd's right
Speaker 1: knee and offered to sell Todd's head. Friends had recommended BRC,
Speaker 1: he said. When the company returned his brother's ashes, everything
Speaker 1: seemed all on the up and up and very professional.
Speaker 1: Shame on BRC for showing such disrespect, Parker said, that's
Speaker 1: so wrong. It's like trafficking. It is, and to make
Speaker 1: matters even grosser, thirty one percent of BRC's body donors
Speaker 1: were veterans. BRC's customers were not always directly acquiring body
Speaker 1: parts from the broker for their own medical education, research,
Speaker 1: or training programs. According to invoices, some customers were middlemen
Speaker 1: brokers who resold or leased body parts originally donated to BRC.
Speaker 1: The consent forms gave BRC the discretion to choose its customers,
Speaker 1: but the forms did not state that the body parts
Speaker 1: could be resold by third parties. In twenty twelve and
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, BRC sold at least nine hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: one body parts, including at least two hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: four human heads, to three such middlemen. In addition to
Speaker 1: the issue of middlemen, a companion of one donors cited
Speaker 1: another area of confusion BRC's use of the term tissue
Speaker 1: in sales pitches and on consent forms. Body brokers commonly
Speaker 1: talk about retrieving tissue from donors. To the medical community,
Speaker 1: tissue means any part of the body from an order
Speaker 1: to a torso, but in interviews with Reuter's family, members
Speaker 1: of some donors said that they believed tissue meant only
Speaker 1: skin samples. Although BRC did sell skin, those sales represented
Speaker 1: just two percent of its business. In voices show Maureen
Speaker 1: Krueger said her partner of forty two years, Fidel Silva,
Speaker 1: told a female hospital worker in his final days that
Speaker 1: he wished to be cremated, and that's when she brought
Speaker 1: it up. Would you be interested in donating tissues? Krueger
Speaker 1: recalled the way she understood it. Krueger said a few
Speaker 1: skin samples would be removed for research purposes. In return,
Speaker 1: BRC would cremate Silva for free. Silva, a sixty nine
Speaker 1: year old construction worker with a high school degree, peppered
Speaker 1: the hospice worker with questions. He asked, well, are you sure?
Speaker 1: What are they going to do? Kruger said he wanted
Speaker 1: to know, and that's when she assured him it was
Speaker 1: only body tissues. They only took samples. They didn't remove
Speaker 1: any organs or parts or anything. It was just tissues,
Speaker 1: and that's when Fidel agreed. The conversation between Fidel's Silva
Speaker 1: and the hospice worker who pitched BRC took place in
Speaker 1: Hospice of HAVISU in Arizona. Its executive director, Dan Matthews
Speaker 1: said he could not discuss the matter due to patient
Speaker 1: privacy laws, but he said the hospice, which offers its
Speaker 1: clients options to donate their bodies to science. Quote removed
Speaker 1: that company BRC from our list of providers unquote upon
Speaker 1: hearing it was under investigation. Internal BRC records show the
Speaker 1: body broker removed Silva's head and his right and left
Speaker 1: arms from shoulder to hand. Each was tagged with a
Speaker 1: tracking number and prepped for sale. Wow Kruger said, I
Speaker 1: didn't really realize they could do all that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I didn't understand that that's what would happen to Fidel
Speaker 1: at all. After the raid of BRC by federal and
Speaker 1: state agents, the body parts seized by authorities remained in
Speaker 1: limbo for almost three years. Their fate, detailed in confidential
Speaker 1: state logs, sworn statements, and photographs, has never been made public.
Speaker 1: Logistical problems began the day of the raid, said former
Speaker 1: agents Parker and Loftus. Authorities were stunned to find so
Speaker 1: much human flesh inside BRC. They said, we expected two
Speaker 1: freezers and a few hundred pounds of body parts, said
Speaker 1: agent Loftus, who's now running for state representative. Instead, we
Speaker 1: found forty freezers with ten tons of bodies and parts.
Speaker 1: Agents entered in hazmat gear and took biopsies from each
Speaker 1: body part to preserve as evidence. Records show that the
Speaker 1: agents then placed one thousan seven hundred and fifty five
Speaker 1: parts into one hundred and forty two body bags. The
Speaker 1: bags were sent to ten local funeral homes so the
Speaker 1: remains could be cremated, but records and interviews show that
Speaker 1: BRC and others for whom it was storing body parts
Speaker 1: objected to their destruction. They argued that the parts had
Speaker 1: a value of more than one million dollars. The cremation
Speaker 1: plans were put on hold, but authorities soon faced a
Speaker 1: pressing problem. According to former agents Loftis and Parker, funeral
Speaker 1: homes could refrigerate but not freeze the body parts, and
Speaker 1: the mortuaries began to complain that some of the parts
Speaker 1: were starting to thaw. As a solution, authorities obtained three
Speaker 1: walk and industrial freezers and installed them at a military
Speaker 1: base used by the Arizona National Guard. Then, bodybag by
Speaker 1: body bag, the mortuaries delivered the parts, and Loftus and
Speaker 1: Parker helped carry them to the freezers. In an interview,
Speaker 1: agent Parker recalled feeling body parts sloshing around inside the
Speaker 1: bags as he moved them. Some bags leaked blood and
Speaker 1: stained his pants and shoes. The experience led to his
Speaker 1: PTSD diagnosis, he said. The spokeswoman for the Arizona Attorney
Speaker 1: General's office said the body parts were kept for federal
Speaker 1: authorities as quote evidence in an ongoing criminal investigation and
Speaker 1: prosecutions across the country. An FBI spokesman declined to comment.
Speaker 1: After almost three years in the containers, the remains were
Speaker 1: cremated and returned to the families that requested them. In
Speaker 1: response to the case of Stephen Gore and the Human
Speaker 1: Chop Shop, the Arizona governor signed into law a bill
Speaker 1: that requires bodybrokers like BRC to be licensed and regularly inspected.
Speaker 1: The new law calls for brokers to follow a set
Speaker 1: of standards and to hiring meta doctor to supervise company practices.
Speaker 1: Although the law was adopted in twenty seventeen, as of
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, it had yet to be enforced, and the
Speaker 1: state Health Department still needed to create specific rules for brokers.
Speaker 1: It was unclear when they would. They do not have
Speaker 1: an anticipated date of completion at this time. Many details
Speaker 1: of the grim scene encountered by the FBI were revealed
Speaker 1: in a civil suit filing by thirty three plaintiffs whose
Speaker 1: loved one's bodies were donated to BRC under the guise
Speaker 1: that they would be used for scientific purposes. In a
Speaker 1: declaration contained in the civil Lawsuits court file, former Phoenix
Speaker 1: FBI special agent Mark Kuinar said he quote personally observed
Speaker 1: various unsettling scenes while inside Biological Resource Center. Many of
Speaker 1: the body parts he saw were piled on top of
Speaker 1: one another, with no apparent identification to indicate what bodies
Speaker 1: they came from or to whom they belonged. He said.
Speaker 1: Agents also found quote infected heads, a small woman's head
Speaker 1: sewn onto a large male torso and hanging on the
Speaker 1: wall like Frankenstein. Agent Kwiner said he saw large male
Speaker 1: torsos with limbs and genitalia removed, buckets and coolers with
Speaker 1: various body parts, including a bucket of heads, arms, and legs,
Speaker 1: an entire freezer filled only with penises, body parts piled
Speaker 1: on top of each other throughout the facility with no
Speaker 1: apparent identification, steel freezers with body parts frozen with no
Speaker 1: apparent identification. Regarding the large male torso with the small
Speaker 1: woman's heads sewn to it, it remains unclear why the
Speaker 1: now shuttered center sowed the different body parts together. But
Speaker 1: Philip Gayet, a former bodybroker who for six years collected
Speaker 1: dead bodies from funeral homes, recovered body parts for transplant,
Speaker 1: and sold them to third parties, offered a surprising theory.
Speaker 1: Many families who can't afford to cremate their relatives donate
Speaker 1: various body parts to body donation centers like the one
Speaker 1: Gayete ran or BRC in exchange for their cremation and
Speaker 1: the subsequent return of the ashes. The only body parts
Speaker 1: that turn to ash are a person's bones, so the
Speaker 1: Arizona center may have taken away too many of a
Speaker 1: dead person's bones and was trying to sew together different
Speaker 1: people's parts to make up a full body's worth of ashes.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. So they take your loved one's body
Speaker 1: and promise to cremate and send you the ashes in return,
Speaker 1: But they sell too much of your loved one's body,
Speaker 1: so they make a literal meat puppet out of a
Speaker 1: piece of your loved one's body and the head of
Speaker 1: a stranger, or parts of several strangers. I mean, who
Speaker 1: knows how many times this sort of thing was done.
Speaker 1: And then they cremate the meat puppet and send you
Speaker 1: the bone ash, but you don't actually know if that
Speaker 1: ash contains some or all or any of your relative
Speaker 1: Holy crap. I mean to me, this takes desecration of
Speaker 1: a corpse to a whole other level. I'm not making
Speaker 1: light of this at all, of course, but I mean
Speaker 1: it might be preferable that a body be fed whole
Speaker 1: to wild dogs, as opposed to chopped into pieces and
Speaker 1: then sewn back together with parts of a stranger or
Speaker 1: various other strangers. And then those ashes are sent to
Speaker 1: your loved ones. And they don't even know if the
Speaker 1: ashes on the mantel place actually belong to the person
Speaker 1: they're supposed to. I mean, they think they know, but
Speaker 1: they don't. This is just horrendous. I suggest not thinking
Speaker 1: too hard on the subject, because the implications just only
Speaker 1: get worse, they don't get better. And in fact, Philip
Speaker 1: Gayette has more to say on this particular subject of
Speaker 1: the large male torso that was sewn together with a
Speaker 1: small female head, like something from a nightmare that even
Speaker 1: Hollywood could barely dream up. Here's Gayette's theory. He says,
Speaker 1: if I knew that a family wanted their ashes back.
Speaker 1: I'd be doing limited recovery of internal organs or tissues,
Speaker 1: so they would get ninety percent of that bone ash back.
Speaker 1: But other people they take everything. They'll take the arms,
Speaker 1: the shoulders, the spine, the hip, and basically all the
Speaker 1: family would be left with is maybe a cups worth
Speaker 1: of ashes from a leftover ribcage or something. So I
Speaker 1: think the family wanted the ashes, and BRC took some
Speaker 1: body parts that they didn't have to get back just
Speaker 1: to make up the volume. That would be my assumption,
Speaker 1: because there's no other reason to go through that work
Speaker 1: of trying to put the body parts back together again,
Speaker 1: or not put the body parts back together again. This
Speaker 1: is seven speaking now, but combining the body parts of
Speaker 1: one person and another. Almost surprisingly, Philip Gayette did wrap
Speaker 1: up his theorizing about why more than one person's dead
Speaker 1: body might be stitched together into a real life horror
Speaker 1: movie prop by saying it's not normal. Thank god for that.
Speaker 1: Gayette also said that his business was entirely legal, and
Speaker 1: that relatives had explicitly given permission for him to take
Speaker 1: the parts of their loved one's bodies for research. Gayette's
Speaker 1: clients included private universities and researchers that needed specific body
Speaker 1: parts for their teaching exercises. They would require various body parts,
Speaker 1: from brains to skin graphs to various tissues to test
Speaker 1: out new medical technologies and carry out research of the
Speaker 1: human body for science while his business as a whole
Speaker 1: was legal. In two thousand and nine, Gayette was sentenced
Speaker 1: to eight years in federal prison for falsifying the medical
Speaker 1: records of some cadavers that he wanted to sell for transplant.
Speaker 1: He served six and a half years, during which time
Speaker 1: he wrote a book about his experiences titled Head, Shoulders, Knees,
Speaker 1: and Bones, with the S in Bones a dollar sign.
Speaker 1: I don't regret being in the business, said Gayette, who
Speaker 1: now works as a land surveyor in southern California. I
Speaker 1: regret some of the things I did, obviously, but the
Speaker 1: business was interesting, and I think life should be interesting.
Speaker 1: Let's move back to the civil suit filed against BRC
Speaker 1: and Stephen Gore by thirty three loved ones of people
Speaker 1: whose bodies were donated to Biological Resource Center. A twenty
Speaker 1: thirteen price list included in the civil court filing indicates
Speaker 1: that a whole body with no shoulders or head could
Speaker 1: be purchased for twenty nine hundred dollars. A torso with
Speaker 1: the head was twenty four hundred dollars. A whole spine
Speaker 1: nine one hundred and fifty, a whole leg eleven hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: a whole foot four hundred and fifty, a knee three
Speaker 1: seventy five apeld us four hundred. More than five thousand
Speaker 1: bodies in total were donated to BRC, and, as just
Speaker 1: stated in the price list, body parts sold for several
Speaker 1: hundred dollars, while fully intact bodies or torsos and heads
Speaker 1: could cost anywhere from twenty four hundred to six thousand,
Speaker 1: and Body brokering remains a legal but virtually unregulated business
Speaker 1: in the United States. The civil lawsuit against Stephen Gore
Speaker 1: laid out many damning claims. Here are four of the
Speaker 1: most stomach churning. Number one, the lawsuit says bodies were
Speaker 1: sold to the Department of Defense as quote crash test dummies.
Speaker 1: According to court documents, Stephen Gore sold donated bodies to
Speaker 1: the Department of Defense for weapons testing. Jim Stofer contracted
Speaker 1: BRC after his mother passed away from Alzheimer's disease and
Speaker 1: was assured by BRC that her body would be used
Speaker 1: for Alzheimer's research. Doris Stoufer's hand was removed, cremated, and
Speaker 1: returned to her family, while her body was sold to
Speaker 1: the US Army to study damage done by roadside bombs.
Speaker 1: Army officials said BRC gave them heavily redacted consent forms
Speaker 1: that said they had permission to use the bodies for testing.
Speaker 1: Those bodies were literally used as crash test dummies, which
Speaker 1: meant they were used in experiments involving exposure to destructive forces,
Speaker 1: for example impacts, crashes, ballistic injuries, and blasts. The civil
Speaker 1: lawsuit States number two. After the twenty fourteen FBI raid,
Speaker 1: Stephen Gore released a statement informing the public that he
Speaker 1: and his staff had cooperated fully with investigators and had
Speaker 1: answered questions without counsel. Gore, the owner of BRC and
Speaker 1: a former Florida insurance agent with no medical training, said
Speaker 1: he had concerns the public might draw the wrong conclusions.
Speaker 1: After the Attorney General issued a statement without providing details.
Speaker 1: As per the Attorney General's message to the public, little
Speaker 1: information has been made available. This lack of information has
Speaker 1: led many to speculate and make incorrect conclusions. Gore's statement
Speaker 1: read what incorrect because they couldn't even imagine how horrific
Speaker 1: the truth actually was. Is that what you mean, Stephen Gore?
Speaker 1: Number three, the FBI found ten tons of frozen remains.
Speaker 1: We've already gone through a lot of the specifics of
Speaker 1: that massive cache of human bodies, so I won't bludgeon
Speaker 1: you with them again. But yes, ten tons of frozen remains.
Speaker 1: And number four Gore was tied to a Michigan body
Speaker 1: dealer named Arthur Rathburn. I mentioned Rathburn briefly in part
Speaker 1: one of this story. It's time to return to him now.
Speaker 1: US customs agents caught Rathburn at the US Canada border
Speaker 1: secretly carrying ten human heads. One of the heads had
Speaker 1: been sold by BRC to Rathburn. FBI agents were eventually
Speaker 1: able to trace two hundred and fifty body parts purchased
Speaker 1: by Rathburn back to Gore and BRC. Rathburn bought bodies
Speaker 1: and body parts from Gore, then rented and sold them
Speaker 1: for medical training at conventions and seminars. He also sees
Speaker 1: secretly sold body parts from clients he'd been paid to cremate.
Speaker 1: An FBI agent was told by his employees that the
Speaker 1: families of the deceased who asked for cremated remains to
Speaker 1: be returned sometimes got quote something else. In some cases,
Speaker 1: Rathburn knowingly rented and sold diseased body parts, including those
Speaker 1: infected with HIV and hepatitis. Body parts he purchased from
Speaker 1: Gore and then sold without telling the buyers they'd be
Speaker 1: exposed to these serious contagious diseases. According to government documents,
Speaker 1: Rathburn supplied unwitting medical educators with body parts infected with
Speaker 1: HIV and hepatitis at least one hundred and twenty times
Speaker 1: between nineteen ninety seven and twenty thirteen. That is awful.
Speaker 1: Rathburn also used Delta cargo to ship body parts. He
Speaker 1: was convicted of fraud and shipping hazardous materials and sentenced
Speaker 1: to nine years in federal prison. Federal prosecutor John Neil
Speaker 1: called Rathburn quote deplorable unquote. Arizona has been a largely
Speaker 1: regular toy free zone for the body parts industry. At
Speaker 1: least four body donation companies are operating in Arizona, in
Speaker 1: addition to a nonprofit cryogenics company that freezes people after
Speaker 1: they die with the intent of one day bringing them
Speaker 1: back to life. Since his death in two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: the cryogenics company Alcore has been home to the frozen
Speaker 1: head of baseball legend Ted Williams. According to a two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine ESPN article, Larry Johnson says in the
Speaker 1: book Frozen, My Journey into the World of Cryonics, Deception,
Speaker 1: and Death, that he watched an Alcore official swing a
Speaker 1: monkey wrench at Ted williams frozen severed head to try
Speaker 1: to remove a tunican stuck to it. The first swing
Speaker 1: accidentally struck the head, and the second knocked the tunican loose.
Speaker 1: Now this should outrage every Red Sox fan, every baseball fan,
Speaker 1: and frankly, like the rest of this horror house shit show,
Speaker 1: it should all outrage any human being. But I digrest.
Speaker 1: Let's move away from the desecration of the corpse of
Speaker 1: the greatest hitter in baseball history and instead get back
Speaker 1: to Stephen Gore, owner of the Human Chop Shop. Gore's attorney,
Speaker 1: Clark Derek, said his client always attempted to do right
Speaker 1: by his donors. Sure, said Gore in a statement quote,
Speaker 1: at some point the business grew exponentially, we became shorthanded.
Speaker 1: We cut some corners, and for that I apologize and
Speaker 1: make amends. In October twenty fifteen, Gore tearfully pleaded guilty
Speaker 1: to conducting an illegal enterprise after accusations that he had
Speaker 1: provided vendors with contaminated human tissue and used body parts
Speaker 1: in ways that the donors had not permitted. Gore's highest
Speaker 1: level of education was high school, and he did not
Speaker 1: have any licenses or certifications applicable to the body donation
Speaker 1: program operations. In a letter to Maricopa County Superior Court
Speaker 1: Judge Warren Granville before his December fifteenth sentencing, Gore wrote
Speaker 1: that he felt overwhelmed, but that he was working in
Speaker 1: the industry with quote no formal regulations unquote to reference
Speaker 1: for guidance. In his pre sentencing letter to Judge Granville,
Speaker 1: Gore wrote, I could have been more open about the
Speaker 1: process of donation on the brochure we put in public
Speaker 1: view when deciding which donors could be eligible to donate.
Speaker 1: I should have hired a medical director rather than relying
Speaker 1: on medical knowledge from books or the internet. Okay, I
Speaker 1: want you to hear that one more time. The guy
Speaker 1: who ran the business accepting donations of the bodies of
Speaker 1: all these people's loved ones, who oversaw cutting up those
Speaker 1: bodies and shipping them all over the country for medical,
Speaker 1: educational and other uses. Literally said in a letter to
Speaker 1: a judge, I should have hired a medical director rather
Speaker 1: than relying on medical knowledge from books or on the internet.
Speaker 1: You know what that means, right? Gore was watching fucking
Speaker 1: YouTube videos, then whipping out the band saw and hacking
Speaker 1: up Grandpa, and all too often Graham was undereducated, living
Speaker 1: in poverty, and likely to be a veteran. It's horrific,
Speaker 1: but hey, they got him right. Something horrible must have
Speaker 1: happened to him, right. Stephen Gore, the man who used
Speaker 1: YouTube to slice and dice dead loved ones and sell
Speaker 1: them for profit, was sentenced to one year of deferred
Speaker 1: of deferred jail time, four years probation, and was ordered
Speaker 1: to pay one hundred and twenty one thousand dollars in restitution.
Speaker 1: The man with a million dollars worth of arms and
Speaker 1: legs and heads and penises in his freezer when the
Speaker 1: FBI rated his shop was given functionally no sentence and
Speaker 1: ordered to pay one hundred and twenty one thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: There are people in federal prison for years for selling
Speaker 1: a small amount of drugs at a street level, and
Speaker 1: this guy running a multi million dollar operation where he
Speaker 1: was defrauding people out of their loved ones remains, cutting
Speaker 1: them up with a YouTube education, often selling bodies that
Speaker 1: were infected with HIV or hepatitis to unknowing, well meaning
Speaker 1: medical educators. This guy gets no sentence in one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty one thousand dollars. Fine. What in the ever
Speaker 1: loving heck is going on here? I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: as though I thought the laws of our country were
Speaker 1: morally sufficient to begin with. But jays Louiz, if this
Speaker 1: doesn't make you shake your head, I don't know what does.
Speaker 1: So Yeah, one hundred and twenty one thousand dollars fine,
Speaker 1: no jail time, a little bit of probation. He did
Speaker 1: get sued in twenty seventeen, as I referred to by
Speaker 1: thirty three family members and loved ones of the people
Speaker 1: whose corpses he desecrated for money. And let's not be
Speaker 1: confused about what was going on here. That's what going on.
Speaker 1: He was desecrating corpses for money, stitching together meat puppets,
Speaker 1: storing freezers full of Genitalia popsicles. I mean, just disgusting stuff.
Speaker 1: No jail time, gets a fine, but he does get
Speaker 1: sued by those thirty three family members and loved ones.
Speaker 1: And what comes of that? They win, Thank goodness, right,
Speaker 1: they win to the tune of fifty eight million dollars
Speaker 1: for thirty three people. That averages out to one one
Speaker 1: point seventy six million per person. I know some loved
Speaker 1: ones were awarded as much as five million dollars. Here's
Speaker 1: the only problem. Gore pled guilty in twenty fourteen, was
Speaker 1: sentenced in twenty fifteen. The loved ones won the lawsuit
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen. And you know what that means. Stephen
Speaker 1: Gore didn't have the money to pay them. He'd been
Speaker 1: out of business, he'd paid big fines, So no justice
Speaker 1: after all. What a cheery and unfortunately unsurprising thought. I
Speaker 1: sometimes feel guilty for being unable to offer all of
Speaker 1: you more happy endings. But I guess at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, you know you're listening to kind of
Speaker 1: murdery and the meanings in the name there. That's often
Speaker 1: how it goes. This is not chicken soup. For the
Speaker 1: soul to be sure, I would like to take a
Speaker 1: moment to remind you of the free three digit lifeline
Speaker 1: number nine eight eight that you can call to receive
Speaker 1: immediate counseling for substance use, mental health or suicidal thoughts. Please,
Speaker 1: if you struggle or have struggled with any of these,
Speaker 1: take a moment and program nine eight eight. It's free.
Speaker 1: It's a lifeline number where you can get immediate counseling.
Speaker 1: Program it into your phone, and if you are in
Speaker 1: a cute crisis, please do call it. Call nine eight
Speaker 1: eight and never forget that the world is a better
Speaker 1: place with you in it. Also, if you're not in
Speaker 1: a cute crisis, because I'm not qualified to help you
Speaker 1: if you are. But if you're not in acute crisis
Speaker 1: and you'd just like to connect with someone, please don't
Speaker 1: hesitate to reach out to me. Kindomurdery at gmail dot
Speaker 1: com or at kind of Murdery on all social media.
Speaker 1: You can also call the kind of Murdery hotline eight
Speaker 1: eight eight Murdery. That's eight eight eight six eight seven
Speaker 1: three three seven nine or eighty eight murder the letter
Speaker 1: why you can call the kind of Murdery hotline. You
Speaker 1: can connect with me that way, and what I would
Speaker 1: really love is if you would call a kind of
Speaker 1: murdery hotline and tell me a story about something kind
Speaker 1: of murdery that happened to you. Now, before I sign off,
Speaker 1: I'd like to say again sending love and prayers to
Speaker 1: Jerry and Tracy Polly from Hillbilly Horror Stories. Jerry is
Speaker 1: facing some serious health challenges right now. Jerry, we love you,
Speaker 1: We're praying for you, and there has been a GoFundMe
Speaker 1: started to help Jerry with medical expenses. I will post
Speaker 1: the link to that go fund me in the show notes.
Speaker 1: If you are able, I would very much appreciate it
Speaker 1: if you would consider donating to the GoFundMe for Jerry
Speaker 1: Polly from Hillbilly Horror Stories, who has been a wonderful
Speaker 1: mentor and friend to me and so many others in
Speaker 1: the podcasting community in the state of Kentucky and frankly
Speaker 1: around the world. Jerry really is one of the best
Speaker 1: people I know, and if anyone deserves to have his
Speaker 1: friends step up for him in a time of need,
Speaker 1: it's Jerry Polly, So please do. If you can consider
Speaker 1: donating to Jerry's GoFundMe. You'll find that link in the
Speaker 1: show notes. Thank you so much for being here with
Speaker 1: me today. I look forward to joining you again on Thursday.
Speaker 1: Until then, I'm Zevan Odleberg and this has been kind, murdery,
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