When FBI agents searched a Mount Washington, Kentucky, apartment Tuesday and found 40 human skulls, spinal cords, femurs and hip bones inside, they asked occupant James Nott if anyone else was home.
“Only my dead friends,” he responded.
Agents found one skull wrapped in a head scarf and another sitting on a mattress where Nott slept. Others were strewn around Apartment No. 3 as if they were decorations.
The grisly discoveries were disclosed in a criminal complaint that put Nott in the middle of a multistate and international trade in body parts stolen from the morgue at Harvard Medical School and a mortuary in Little Rock, Arkansas.
story in the New York Times, one member of the network was Cedric Lodge, morgue manager for Harvard Medical School’s Anatomical Gift Program. Lodge was steading parts from cadavers and selling them on the internet, according to the complaint.
According to the affidavit, Pauley communicated over Facebook with Nott, who identified himself by the pseudonym, about the sale and shipment of human remains. Nott sent him photos and videos, it says.
“How much for the couple you sent, plus the spines,” Pauley asked.
Nott quoted him a price and Pauley replied, “Works for me.”
Pauley, Lodge and four others were charged in federal court in Pennsylvania with interstate transportation of stolen property and conspiracy.
Source: courier-journal.com