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Feds Found Fetuses in Ghastly Body Parts Warehouse Raid

Last year, we reported on the case of a ghoulish Michigan couple who were busted by federal authorities for trafficking in black market body parts, some which were diseased and were then rented and sold to medical students. In some cases, the pieces were infected with HIV.

The charming couple – Arthur and Elizabeth Rathburn of Gross Pointe – were indicted on multiple counts for their body shop operation where they sold and rented out bits and pieces of cadavers, some which they dismembered using a chainsaw, a band saw and a reciprocating saw.

According to a 2016 Detroit Free Press story on the raid:

In February 2012, the Rathburns delivered a package of eight fresh human heads using a Delta cargo airplane to a customer. None of the heads were embalmed, even though Rathburn claimed they were. One of those heads came from someone who had sepsis and pneumonia.

“This alleged scheme to distribute diseased body parts not only defrauded customers from the monetary value of their contracts, but also exposed them and others to infection,” U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade said in announcing the indictment. “The alleged conduct risked the health of medical students, dental students and baggage handlers.”

Rathburn, a former University of Michigan morgue attendant, has long been the central figure in a years-long investigation dubbed “Body Brokers.” The FBI and border officials were on his trail for years, but it wasn’t until December 2013 that they zeroed in on him and raided his warehouse in Detroit, seizing more than a thousand body parts — heads, hands, legs, torsos — that were then stored in a deep freezer at the Wayne County Morgue.

According to the indictment, rather than use industry-standard sterilized autopsy equipment, Rathburn used chainsaws and other types of saws to cut up the bodies. He bought his body parts from cadaver centers in Arizona and Illinois, and got discounts on parts that were infected, the indictment said. He faces wire fraud, aiding and abetting, and making false statements charges. If convicted, he could face up to 20 years in prison.

An additional development in this macabre case is being reported by Reuters and it isn’t for the weak of stomach. In addition to the diseased and poorly stored pieces of bodies, the feds also found a number of fetuses.

The new details have emerged as Rathburn’s trial approaches.

Via Reuters “Exclusive: Federal agents found fetuses in body broker’s warehouse”:

Federal agents discovered four preserved fetuses in the Detroit warehouse of a man who sold human body parts, confidential photographs reviewed by Reuters show.

The fetuses were found during a December 2013 raid of businessman Arthur Rathburn’s warehouse. The fetuses, which appear to have been in their second trimester, were submerged in a liquid that included human brain tissue.

Rathburn, a former body broker, is accused of defrauding customers by sending them diseased body parts. He has pleaded not guilty and his trial is set for January.

How Rathburn acquired the fetuses and what he intended to do with them is unclear. Rathburn’s lawyers did not respond to requests for comment, and neither the indictment nor other documents made public in his case mention the fetuses.

“This needs to be reviewed,” said U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee who recently chaired a special U.S. House committee on the use of fetal tissue.

Blackburn recoiled when a Reuters reporter showed her some of the photographs, taken by government officials involved in the raid.

In four of the photos, a crime scene investigator in a hazmat suit uses forceps to lift a different fetus from the brownish liquid. In three other photos, a marker that includes a government evidence identification number lies beside a fetus.

“The actions depicted in these photos are an insult to human dignity,” said U.S. Representative Bob Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. A Republican from Virginia, Goodlatte said that if individuals “violate federal laws and traffic in body parts of unborn children for monetary gain,” they should be “held accountable.”

Blackburn said the discoveries in Rathburn’s warehouse raise questions about the practices of body brokers across America. Such brokers take cadavers donated to science, dismember them and sell them for parts, typically for use in medical research and education. The multimillion-dollar industry has been built largely on the poor, who donate their bodies in return for a free cremation of leftover body parts.

The buying and selling of cadavers and other body parts — with the exception of organs used in transplants — is legal and virtually unregulated in America. But trading in fetal tissue violates U.S. law.

In most states, including Michigan, public health authorities are not required to regularly inspect body broker facilities. As a result, it’s impossible to know whether body brokers who deal in adult donors are acquiring and profiting from fetuses.

The fetuses are a particularly grisly detail in this utterly disgusting story of a bizarre and morbid business that flies under the radar – until now. More disturbing than the fetuses in Rathburn’s freezer is the prospect that someone sold them to him and is likely profiting from the murders of the unborn.

The trial is set to begin next month.

via Downtrend.com

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