[shaky breathing]
♪ I ♪
♪ Love ♪
♪ You ♪
♪ Open up your heart ♪♪
[Mariana Van Zeller] I've reported on the illegal trade
of human organs in the past.
So I thought I'd seen it all in terms of those making a
killing from body parts.
But recent headlines have identified another unexpected
trade in human remains.
[News Anchor] Illegally selling body parts.
[News Anchor] Arms, legs, heads, torsos.
[Man] Man that is sick.
[Mariana Van Zeller] One that's even stranger and
closer to home.
[News Anchor] Four human skulls in a box.
[News Anchor] Headed for South Carolina.
[Mariana Van Zeller] In the shadows of the legal death
industry, there's a bustling trade in stolen body parts.
[Funeral Director] Human tongue $1,000.
I'm surprised it's that high, cause you could take one of
those pretty easily.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Black market operators are selling
everything from skulls and bones to spines and skin.
[John] This is the remaining portion I have of human skin.
[Mariana Van Zeller] All to the highest bidder.
[Funeral Director] I could bring my lunch box into the
prep room and cut out a kidney and no one would ever know.
[Mariana Van Zeller] It all begs a terrifying question,
what really happens to your body after you die?
♪ Your heart ♪♪
[John] Life doesn't end when you're in the ground.
I could carry around a portion of somebody for the next
200, 300 years.
♪ Love you ♪♪
[theme music plays]
[jet engine rumbling]
[Mariana Van Zeller] I'm driving through the valleys of
Western Colorado and thinking about the logistics of death.
On paper, what happens to a body after death looks fairly simple:
Typically, the first stop is a funeral home,
where the body is sent to be prepped for cremation or burial.
If, instead, the person has
chosen to donate their body to science,
it goes from the funeral home to a tissue bank
or university donation program
before being used for training, education or research.
But as the people of Montrose, Colorado know all too well,
things don't always go as planned.
[Rick] I get a call from the FBI, they want me to come in
and I'm thinking, "Well what the heck did I do now?"
So I went down to the sheriff's department and I
went in there, and he says, "You might be a victim of,"
you know, "cutting up the body parts," and I'm thinking,
"What?"
I've never even heard of that before.
Who does that?
[News Anchor] Tonight a funeral home owner and her
parents now under investigation by the FBI.
[News Anchor] The accusations are outlandish.
[Mariana Van Zeller] As local news reported, Megan Hess and
her mother Shirley Koch,
owners of the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home,
were charged with the stealing and selling of body parts
from more than 500 corpses.
[News Anchor] Her organs, from her mother's heart, to liver,
and even her hands and feet were sold
to so-called body brokers.
[Mariana Van Zeller] I want to understand how this grisly
black market works, so I've come to meet with the families
of her victims.
[Candace] My father called me and asked if I had been
watching the news about Sunset Mesa and I hadn't.
[News Anchor] Claims of secretly dismembering and
selling body parts.
[Connie] She came with an SUV, a body bag and a gurney,
and I never called her.
[News Anchor] Federal agents followed and arrested
Meghan Hess and Shirley Koch.
[Debra] She was creepy.
She was very creepy and there were very many red flags.
[Judy] Everybody trusts a funeral home and you can't.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Throughout the investigation,
the victims' families became an informal support group
for each other.
[Candace] Different parts of her were sold and then they
listed the parts, and that was really difficult to hear.
[Diana] Hannah was 23 when she passed away and they sent her
to Sunset Mesa for cremation.
[sighing]
With that in mind, they decided that they would
steal her spine.
She had a beautiful tattoo of Harmony
and her brother and sister on her back.
You know, how do you get a spine out of a
23 year old girl's back?
[Kimberly] That's the nightmares that you live with.
[Rick] Yeah, just picturing everybody here, somebody just
hacking your loved one up.
[Debra] Laura was sold before I got there to
make the arrangements.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Within 24 hours?
[Debra] Less, she was gone.
[Mariana Van Zeller] To be clear, with consent,
the selling of corpses and body parts in the United States,
by tissue banks or universities after they've used them for
their initial purpose, is completely legal.
What's illegal is charging up to $1000 for cremations
that never took place.
Secretly dismembering the bodies and selling the most
valuable parts to customers.
Buyers were charged $300 for a spine, $500 for a head,
more than $1,200 for a pelvis with upper legs and they had
no responsibility to check that the bodies had been
donated willingly.
All told, Hess netted $1.2 million.
To cover her tracks, she returned fake ashes to the
families, a scheme that was exposed by former employees
of the funeral home.
[News Anchor] Instead of cremains their cherished boxes
contained cement, sand and what appeared to be,
old batteries.
[Debra] So nobody got their loved ones back.
Nobody.
They just mixed them all together with trash.
[Paul Johnson] Megan Hess ran a funeral home and she ran a
body donation business out of the same building.
That's the problem with this industry;
it can be done legally,
it can be done lawfully, it can be done ethically.
But right now that depends on the personal ethics of
the people running these businesses.
Oversight from the government is truly lacking.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Paul Micah Johnson was the lead
agent on the FBI investigation that busted Hess and her mother.
[Paul Johnson] At the risk of getting a little bit
philosophical, I think that most of us are
uncomfortable with death.
So that industry that requires dead bodies is something that
most people don't think about and don't want to think about.
And because of that, there's lots of room for things to
go on unnoticed.
[Mariana Van Zeller] The U.S. stands out for allowing a
for-profit trade in human remains
with very little regulation.
That combo has made the U.S. the wild west of body parts.
As agent Johnson saw first-hand in a case that
became a sensation in the Detroit area.
[News Anchor] Arthur Rathburn accused of buying, storing,
selling and renting diseased human body parts to doctors.
Body parts from more than 1,000 different people,
heads, arms, legs.
[Paul Johnson] He had dozens of freezers filled with
human remains, often unwrapped,
piled directly on top of each other,
frozen together.
He had a regular refrigerator
and in that there was a human head,
as well as some of his food,
a sandwich was in there near a human head.
A metal container that had four human fetuses,
mixed in with floating slices of human brain.
His warehouse was the... something of nightmares.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Rathburn was an extreme case, but
Johnson says he's seen abuse all over, at funeral homes,
in the university donation programs and at
both for-profit and nonprofit tissue banks.
[Paul Johnson] Just like any other illegal activity the
primary incentive is money.
So, it comes down to greed.
[Mariana Van Zeller] It's a chilling assessment, and as
my investigation takes me to Arizona, it's time to find the
folks who see the dead as dollar signs.
[wind blowing]
[Garland Shreves] Most people, when they think of whole body
donation, they don't really realize the impact that it has
on medicine, and society as a whole.
Whole body donation saves more lives in this country,
every single year, than transplant donation,
than all the lives saved put together by transplant
since transplant began.
Because you couldn't have the medicine we do today,
the advancements in medicine we do today,
if it were not for donors.
[Mariana Van Zeller] To understand the criminal
possibilities of this trade, I need to see how the
legitimate side of the industry works.
Research for Life is a tissue bank
that depends on body donations.
It's run by Garland Shreves, who works alongside his wife
and some of his children.
[Garland Shreves] Research for Life is a
whole body donor organization.
Donors benefit either medical education or research.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Shreves is opening his doors to us
because he believes in transparency of a process
that some might find disturbing.
What does your family say about your job?
[Hayley] They never want to talk about it.
You know, the first, the first six months they didn't hear,
they didn't want to hear a singular thing.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Really?
If you're dealing with an ethically-run company, this is
what body donation looks like behind the scenes.
[Mariana Van Zeller] When a body arrives it's kept in
cold storage before the "procurement process" where
the body is cut up into smaller pieces for sale
around the world.
[Hayley] And then this is to tag so we can identify the donor.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Mm-hmm.
[Hayley] Once we ship out the tissue.
[Mariana Van Zeller] This leg, for example, might be sent to
a medical device company or an orthopedic surgeon needing
a practice specimen.
[Garland Shreves] You may ask me any question that you like,
but you're not going to see any blood, or gore,
or anything of that nature.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Garland Shreves opens his doors
several times a year to people who are considering donating
their bodies to medical research.
[Cheryl] What's under the, the blue tarps here?
[Garland Shreves] This tag tells me it's a torso,
it's a human torso.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Tissue banks like Research for Life
provide the cadavers needed for vital hands-on training.
Everything from hip-replacement practice for surgeons,
to teaching first-responders how to intubate patients
relies on body donation.
[Medic] Remember you don't want to suction for more than
10 seconds because you're taking the air out of their body.
[Garland Shreves] When we are notified that a donor is in
route, they're going to come up a ramp, and they're going
to go directly into this refrigerator, that will reduce
the rate of decomposition.
So you can come over and you guys can take a look inside.
[Cheryl] Are we going in?
[Garland Shreves] You can go in if that's what you like.
[Cheryl] Oh yeah, okay.
[Garland Shreves] You can see them right there.
[Cheryl] I saw enough!
[laughing]
[Mariana Van Zeller] Shreves' business depends on finding
people willing to donate their bodies for free, so he's eager
to show these potential donors the care they take in each
step of the process.
[Cheryl] Are these, like, all the same body parts?
[Garland Shreves] They're different body parts.
This is a mid-forearm to fingertip.
It's got a donor number on it.
You see that?
Everything is tagged, everything is marked,
where it came from.
How it can be used.
A reminder that it has to be treated with
dignity and respect.
[Paul Johnson] There is a lot more that is legal
than is illegal in this industry.
It doesn't matter if people are trading bones, or tissues,
or pieces of brain.
The buying and selling of body parts is completely legal at
the federal level.
Completely.
[Mariana Van Zeller] That's what's so different about the
body parts trade than other trafficking stories
I've covered.
The bad actors are often part of the legal industry because,
just like body-donation businesses, the criminal trade
depends on access to body parts.
That's why Megan Hess's funeral home was
the perfect cover.
As I try to find an active player, I cross reference
complaints and citations against other funeral homes
and tissue banks.
I search Yelp reviews looking for suspicious anecdotes.
And I reach out to dozens of people in the industry.
You worked in the tissue bank industry
for many years, correct?
[Funeral Worker] About 30 years.
[Funeral Director] No one would bat any eye even if I
was working on a body and it had a huge chunk of skin missing.
Human skin sells pretty frequently and it's expensive.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Which body parts were they?
[Funeral Worker] Arms, feet, legs.
[phone line ringing]
[Colton Clouse] I know that a lot of samples that we have
come across have been old retired medical specimens.
So, various colleges use them.
They usually get them from mortuaries, or tissue banks,
or stuff like that.
[Mariana Van Zeller] I know this is always, you know,
kind of a complicated, question,
but if you think you could share any contacts.
We know there's a lot of people out there that know
a lot of stuff and don't want to talk about it.
[Funeral Director] Um...
[Mariana Van Zeller] Eventually, I catch a break.
[♪ spooky ambient music]
It's been a really hard one to crack,
just no one wants to talk.
It's a very sort of secretive and closed community.
Most people that we spoke to said that they are afraid that
even if we put a mask on them and disguise their voice that
they think that everyone will know who they are.
So, we're meeting this guy
that I've spoken to on the phone,
he's a funeral director.
He agreed mainly because we're meeting in sort of an
undisclosed location.
He says he also has some stuff that he wants to show us.
I'm quite curious to know what that is.
This is it, this is the motel.
[turn signal clicking]
[♪ ambient music]
[Mariana Van Zeller] Um, did you hear about the Megan Hess
case in Colorado?
[Funeral Director] I did. I did.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Do you think that's happening right now
in other places across America?
[Funeral Director] Yes. Yes.
[Mariana Van Zeller] For sure?
[Funeral Director] Yes.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Okay.
[Funeral Director] It's happening. It's happening.
It's too easy to not happen.
[exhales]
[Mariana Van Zeller] When and, I guess, why did you become a
funeral director?
[Funeral Director] Because I knew that I could and I know
that a lot of people can't, or aren't willing to.
'Cause it's disgusting and it's very hard work.
I was responsible for everything, so basically
any aspect that you can think of.
[Mariana Van Zeller] So you're talking in the past tense,
are you not a funeral director anymore?
[Funeral Director] I still have my license, but I have
left that business,
just because I think it's too ugly for me.
We're overworked, we are horribly underpaid and
eventually just spending most of your time with dead people
instead of living ones, it's not a fun job.
[Mariana Van Zeller] This is a really difficult story and
it's been really hard to get people to talk to us.
[Funeral Director] Yes.
[Mariana Van Zeller] So, I'd love to hear from you some of
the darkest things that you've seen in this industry and the
things that you think shouldn't exist.
[Funeral Director] First and foremost, it is far too easy
to get away with theft um, of either personal effects,
or body parts in the funeral business.
There are plenty of opportunities, if someone
were so inclined to go in there with a scalpel, or not even
necessarily in the case of an autopsy, all of the organs are
conveniently presented to us in a bag.
[Mariana Van Zeller] What would a person do with a bag
full of someone's insides.
[Funeral Director] If they were so inclined, they could
make wet specimens, put them in a jar, fix them with
formaldehyde or alcohol and um, sell them.
[Mariana Van Zeller] So there's a market?
[Funeral Director] There is a market, yes, yes.
[Mariana Van Zeller] You could do that and it would be
totally legal for you to do that?
[Funeral Director] It would not be legal to take the organ,
but it is legal to buy, sell and trade organs in
47 of the 50 states.
[Mariana Van Zeller] And it sells for good money?
Like there's an incentive for this?
[Funeral Director] Oh yeah, it can be very profitable.
For example, this is my pen.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Okay.
[Funeral Director] And inside that pen is a slice of
human brain.
And I've seen the brain that this slice came from.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Oh my God.
[Funeral Director] This was legal for me to buy,
perfectly legal.
-Can I see it? -Absolutely.
[Mariana Van Zeller] So, this is a little piece of brain?
[Funeral Director] Yes, it is.
[Mariana Van Zeller] A human brain?
[Funeral Director] Yes. Yes.
-Wow. -Yeah.
[Mariana Van Zeller] And where do you buy it from?
[Funeral Director] Facebook or Instagram.
This was a woman who got access to some brains from
a medical collection.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Mm-hmm.
[Funeral Director] And I took the time to slice 'em up and
make these pens.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Why did you buy it?
[Funeral Director] Uh, I am involved in this trade because
I'm also a collector of oddities and most people
don't have a piece of human brain sitting on their desk.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Mm-hmm.
[Funeral Director] And I just think it's interesting.
[Mariana Van Zeller] And in the case where they are
body parts that are taken,
where do you think those are ending up?
[Funeral Director] Private groups for buying, selling
and trading oddities.
Skin for example, you can get away with selling, like,
on Facebook.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Openly?
Like if I go on Facebook right now I'm going to see people
selling this stuff?
[Funeral Director] No.
You would need to be part of a private group, or they're not
going to let you in.
[Mariana Van Zeller] The oddities market can mean
anything from animal taxidermy, to antique medical tools,
to human remains.
And it represents another ecosystem of buyers for those
with legal, or illegal body parts to sell.
He agrees to show me the private marketplaces, so I can
see just how easy it is to pick up body parts in the U.S.
[Funeral Director] There we go.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Oh, my god.
Do you think this is human skin?
[Funeral Director] I mean, yeah.
A human skin wallet for $2500 that is on par with what the
price should be.
[Mariana Van Zeller] So, in this case, this person is
selling a skeleton, and it's, U.S. only,
and he's selling it for $4,650?
[Funeral Director] Yeah. Yeah, very lucrative.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Late 19th century scientific
skelly medical model.
Is that what they say a lot, that this is old?
[Funeral Director] Yeah, they'll often claim that
things are usually around 100 years old, so that they're
minimizing any risk in case they are selling something
that is fresh and therefore much more likely to be
illegally taken.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Uterus.
[Funeral Director] Yeah, a dissected human uterus.
Yeah.
[Mariana Van Zeller] $40.
And a tongue goes for $1,100?
[Funeral Director] $1,000, I'm surprised it's that high,
'cause you could take one of those pretty easily.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Oh, my God.
This is so (bleep) crazy.
So, this is skin with tattoos,
how does a person procure one of these?
How do you get it?
[Funeral Director] So that, that seems to be in good shape,
it's obviously not very old.
It's not all dried and worn out, looks like there's still
some hair on it.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Yeah, this person asks,
"Is this real human skin? How do you get this?
I'm intrigued."
And then there was no answer.
[Funeral Director] Yeah, good luck getting an answer to that.
This is one of those examples where I think that it would
have come from maybe an autopsy case.
A piece of skin could just be taken off a body when no one
would know the difference.
[Mariana Van Zeller] So illegally in that case?
[Funeral Director] Yes, yeah, yeah.
I can't imagine how this would have been obtained otherwise.
[Mariana Van Zeller] That is so crazy.
So, if we're looking for some of the bad actors in this
market place, do you think this is a good place for us to start?
[Funeral Director] So, I'm going to see how many people
in this group might actually be, like,
funeral professionals or coroners,
so we can search the members for... let's do 'coroner'.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Wow, licensed funeral director,
deputy coroner,
so people who have access to body parts and bodies.
[Funeral Director] Yeah, yeah, there are a number of
professionals in here.
[Mariana Van Zeller] You weren't expecting that?
[Funeral Director] Yeah, I mean, it's just,
it's kind of weird to think about.
These are also people who...
[Mariana Van Zeller] Have access.
[Funeral Director] Who would have access to getting skin or
organs and then being able to sell them.
Yeah, and I'm sure some of them are the people
who do that.
[Mariana Van Zeller] That's so creepy.
In terms of the oddities market,
you know some of the big players.
[Funeral Director] I do.
[Mariana Van Zeller] That you believe are
acquiring these illegally.
[Funeral Director] Yes.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Do you think they would talk to us?
Do you think you could try to get us in touch with them?
[Funeral Director] I think that it's pretty unlikely.
These are people who are breaking the law and I think
would go to um, great lengths to not get caught.
But I do believe that a lot of the human bones on the market
right now are brought in illegally from other countries.
I know that some come in from China and I know that some
come in from Mexico.
That's just grave robbing, really, is what it is.
[Mariana Van Zeller] So, you think grave robbing is
actually happening?
[Funeral Director] I think that a lot of the bones that
are bought and sold in the United States were pulled out
of the ground in another country.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Oh.
[♪ twangy music]
[sirens]
[singing in foreign language]
[Mariana Van Zeller] Okay so, I think we're actually getting
pretty close.
They've told us we can't go in through the main gate,
we have to go through a side or a back entrance.
Grave digging sounds like something out of the
19th century but apparently, it's still very much a thing.
Obviously, they say that the reason this is happening at
night is because nobody knows that we're coming,
nobody knows they're doing what they're doing.
I haven't actually met this guy, so I'm not sure what to expect.
I've learned that grave digging is a major source of
black market bones and skulls.
And through my connections in Mexico,
I've come to see how it works.
[footsteps]
I've been given some specific instructions
of how to find the spot,
and it kind of feels like the start of every
bad horror movie.
Nothing creepy about walking around a cemetery at night.
[distant dog barking]
[digging]
[in Spanish] Hello.
Hello, hi.
[speaking Spanish].
[Mariana Van Zeller] Uh-hmm.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Mexico City is running out of
cemetery space.
30,000 people die each year in the capital and
burial plots are scarce.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Uh-hmm.
To make room, some cemeteries enforce burial limits,
exhuming bodies after a certain number of years.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Uh-huh.
And just like that, I learn of a new set of buyers.
Santeria is a Caribbean religion that fuses
Yoruba beliefs from West Africa with Roman Catholicism.
It's now practiced in parts of Mexico and the U.S., too.
And can sometimes include the use of human remains in
secretive rituals performed by priests called Santeros.
[rustling, panting]
[unzipping]
[Mariana Van Zeller] Wow, it's crazy.
It's, um, so that's a skull,
with actually, with a lot of teeth in it.
Whoo.
The smell is very strong.
Lot's of body parts still with clothing. Um.
[Mariana Van Zeller] You can see how people can actually
make some good money here.
Sell this for $500 and, in the U.S.,
it goes for thousands of dollars.
And apparently it's happening all over Mexico.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Okay. They said we should go.
Okay.
The odd shape of this black market is coming into focus
but I still want to find an active buyer here in the U.S.
That's what brings me to Miami,
a city with an active Santeria community.
And where a contact has put me in touch with a Santero
willing to talk.
So I think we're close.
Sort of an industrial area looks like.
[music intensifying]
I think that's it, actually.
That's the white SUV.
-Hi. -Hey.
[Mariana Van Zeller] How are you doing?
Can we see it?
[Buyer] Yeah.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Oh, wow.
[Mariana Van Zeller] So you are involved in Santeria?
Is that.
[Buyer] That's what we practice.
[Mariana Van Zeller] And what are you sort of a, a priest?
[Buyer] Well, uh, yeah, if you want to call it that, yeah.
[Mariana Van Zeller] How do you want to call it?
[Buyer] It's, it's we, we're called Babalawo.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Babalawo?
[Buyer] Yeah. That's the highest rank that
you could have in the religion.
[Mariana Van Zeller] So Miami is sort of a hub for Santeria?
[Buyer] Oh, yeah. Big time, big time.
[Mariana Van Zeller] And in your ceremonies, bones and all
sorts of different body parts, are those used in ceremonies,
or how are you involved?
[Buyer] It's a religion that most people don't know.
Most people don't even, you don't even think how far it
could go with just the power of a chant.
I could either save someone's life, or with a chant I could
maybe kill somebody's life.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Can you tell me which bones, or
body parts are we talking about?
[Buyer] The most common is, uh, uh, skulls.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Skulls.
[Buyer] But we use all body parts.
You could use it for your protection, for anything,
for avoiding bad things, getting to you.
Hey, maybe you have a child with cancer.
He's dying and the doctors can't do anything for him.
[Mariana Van Zeller] So is that, you know, are those the
situations in which you sometimes do.
-Sometimes. -Santeria ceremonies?
[Buyer] Yes. My grandmother was dying of stage 4 cancer.
Lung cancer.
[Mariana Van Zeller] And you performed a ritual on her?
A ceremony?
[Buyer] Yup. And she's there.
[Mariana Van Zeller] She's still alive?
[Buyer] She's there.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Do you, do you have anything with
you right now?
[Buyer] I have, but it's not, I mean, it's inside the same.
Yeah.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Can we see it?
Even if we don't see the inside?
[Buyer] Yeah.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Wow.
So it's a shell, right?
[Buyer] It's a shell, yeah.
[Mariana Van Zeller] And then what's inside?
[Buyer] It contains a whole lot of ingredients and stuff.
But the main one is the skull.
[Mariana Van Zeller] So there's a skull inside, actually?
[Buyer] This one I had to break it in pieces,
so it could, it all fit inside.
Yup.
[Mariana Van Zeller] How much do you have pay for a skull?
[Buyer] I paid 5,000, so.
[Mariana Van Zeller] $5,000?
-Yes. -For a skull?
[Buyer] They're expensive.
[Mariana Van Zeller] How old do you think it was?
[Buyer] I mean, this one in particular, there were twins.
Eight months?
-Eight months old? -Yup.
-So baby twins? -Yup.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Do you worry at all where the, where
these bones, or body parts, or skulls are coming from?
[Buyer] No. I don't, I don't really care.
I mean, I, I just want to, you know, resolve my problem
for my people.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Do you have any idea where this
skull came from?
[Buyer] Which one?
[Mariana Van Zeller] The skull that's inside here, or I mean,
where do you get your skulls, and bones.
[Buyer] I'd rather not, yeah. Not answer that question.
[Mariana Van Zeller] But is it a place, or a person?
[Buyer] It's a person that I, usually, yeah.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Do you think this person would
talk to us?
[Buyer] Uh, maybe. I would have to talk to him.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Typically, these sorts of asks
don't pay off.
But later that same day, he comes through
and I feel like I'm on the verge of meeting someone
who claims to be a real player.
If I can find him.
Is it here?
[Producer] Yeah.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Nothing weird about driving in the
middle of nowhere.
[music intensifying]
[car engine rumbling]
[door opens, closes]
[footsteps]
-I'm Mariana. -Chichi.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Hi, Chichi. Nice to meet you.
Thanks for meeting us.
[Chichi] Of course.
[Mariana Van Zeller] We spoke with somebody who says that
they have been, they've purchased some body parts
and bones from you.
Um, can you tell me, um, yeah.
Where, where do you get this stuff and how are you involved
in the business?
[Chichi] I, uh, I, uh, I work for a company that was a
biomedical company and dealt with, uh, the donors.
And, uh, the tissue went into a biohazard bin.
It could have been anywhere from your big bones,
to your spine, to your pelvis.
Right?
Uh, all that would be discarded into a
big garbage can.
And it was done. That's it. It was gone.
Gonna go get cremated.
Right?
And then there was, uh, few things I was able to,
you know, kind of take, Right?
And put it inside my sweater
and kind of just put it in my bag. Right?
[Mariana Van Zeller] And there were no cameras there, nothing?
No surveillance?
[Chichi] Not in the, not, not once it was inside the, uh,
biomedical, uh, biohazard bins.
So this is a image of a big bone that I was able to take out.
That was gonna get discarded.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Oh, so there's a lot of bags.
-Yeah. -With lot of bones.
And what, what bone?
[Chichi] That's a tibia.
-Oh, the leg bone? -Yeah.
[Mariana Van Zeller] So you literally put it sort of under
your sweater and walked out with it and then put it
in a backpack?
[Chichi] Yeah. Yeah.
It's just, you know, simply just tucking it and going.
There was many people that worked in the company that
got caught up reselling discarded tissue on eBay.
[Mariana Van Zeller] No way.
Finally, firsthand evidence of what I've heard throughout
this journey, that the real threat in this black market
are opportunists working inside the legal industry,
like this guy and his co-workers.
[Chichi] It was many different people that did this, as well.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Uh-huh.
[Chichi] I was just one that, you know, excelled.
[Mariana Van Zeller] How long did you work at this
tissue bank for?
[Chichi] I worked there for about three and a half years.
[Mariana Van Zeller] I'm in Florida, where I've finally
connected with a man who claims to be a black market
seller of body parts.
So you actually knew other people who did the same?
[Chichi] Yeah, and those people ended up getting dealt with
through the company and were let go.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Oh, so the company actually found out
they were doing this?
[Chichi] Yeah. Yeah.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Oh, so they let them go because of it?
[Chichi] Yeah.
[Mariana Van Zeller] And did the company ever, uh,
report to the authorities?
[Chichi] Hmm. I don't think so.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Um, what body parts are we talking about?
[Chichi] It could vary.
It could vary from a skull to a pinky toe.
What people needed, the human bones.
[Mariana Van Zeller] But you were also making money from it?
[Chichi] Yeah.
I'm taking a bone and I'm selling it for 1,000, 5,000,
$6,000, depending on what it is.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Is it expensive because it is not
usually available because it's hard to get, I'm assuming?
[Chichi] Yeah.
In order to get a skull, you gotta go to the cemetery.
Right?
And that's the only way to get it,
is if we go into the cemetery.
And, uh, there's only one cemetery here in Miami that's
capable of offering that.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Wait, so, so there's actually a, a
graveyard here in Miami where people go and...
[Chichi] Yeah. It's, uh, in the heart of Liberty City,
it's a very old cemetery.
It's filled, so there's graves that come out of the ground
and if needed, that's the place.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Have you done it, too? No?
[Chichi] Uh, yeah.
-The grave robbing? -Yeah.
-Oh, you have, as well? -Yeah.
Uh, this skull here.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Oh, wow.
[Chichi] Right? This was taken out of the cemetery.
[Mariana Van Zeller] So it's a skull that you procured,
that you got, you sold.
[Chichi] Yeah. Yeah, I went and dealt this.
[Mariana Van Zeller] How much money would you say you made
in total actually, more or less?
[Chichi] Close to 80k.
[Mariana Van Zeller] I mention the buyer I met earlier.
[Chichi] He's, uh, my biggest customer.
[Mariana Van Zeller] And, well, I think he did say he
bought a skull for a $5,000 from you.
[Chichi] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
You know, whatever he did with whatever I sold him afterwards
was his matters.
You know?
[Mariana Van Zeller] And if the police were to catch you,
what do you think would happen to you?
[Chichi] Uh, I mean, I'm pretty sure, uh,
everyone's aware of what could happen.
Right?
But it's untraceable at this point.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Untraceable, a heartbreaking
thought for the bodies of our loved ones,
and a far cry from resting in peace.
When you die do you think you want your body to be donated?
[Chichi] Um, I'm not a donor,
uh, and I want to leave this message clear,
that this can happen to anyone,
regardless of you being a donor, or not.
Your body parts are gonna be sold and it's gonna be sold
to him at a top dollar.
[Mariana Van Zeller] But you should note that
every now and then, justice does get served.
[News Anchor] Megan Hess and Shirley Koch pleaded guilty
to mail fraud.
[Mariana Van Zeller] For their crimes, Megan Hess was sentenced
to 20 years and
her mother, Shirley Koch, to 15 years in federal prison.
[Paul Johnson] Would I donate my body to science?
Um, no.
I do believe in the work,
but I don't trust the industry as a whole.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Around 3 million people die in the U.S.
every year, that's 3 million families trying to figure out
burial, cremation or donation arrangements for loved ones.
But if the options seem hopeless, they're not.
In the course of reporting this story I met a lot of
people on the hunt for the right option.
It's out there.
You just have to do your homework.
Like Sherri did.
[Sherri] I was diagnosed in 2013.
I had a mastectomy,
and then eventually I had a second tumor.
I'm at the level of hospice that is end of life care.
[Mariana Van Zeller] How do you feel physically right now?
[Sherri] I have to have a lot of sleep, so I've sort of
given into that and I eat like crazy.
[Mariana Van Zeller] Mm-hmm.
[Sherri's Husband] She ate 24 cream puffs one night.
[laughing]
[Mariana Van Zeller] Without much time left, Sherri came to
the decision to donate her body to science,
specifically to a program at Western Carolina University
that trains dogs to find missing people.
[Dog Trainer] What? Atta girl.
[Mariana Van Zeller] It made Sherri feel good that her body
would be used to help other families after she's gone.
What would you say to the people who don't respect
those wishes, who profit out of people's bodies
without their consent?
Whether you're running a funeral home and selling
body parts in the back,
or you're stealing body parts to use them in the oddities market.
I think there's this idea that,
"who cares, the person's already dead,
who cares what happens to their body?"
[Sherri] Right.
[Mariana Van Zeller] So what would you say to those people?
[Sherri] Well, it's, to me, probably one of the greatest
forms of invasion.
It's the final act of a human being.
Your leaving is no small thing.
So when you have someone who has moved into that process
in an illegal way,
I'm, I'm baffled and I'm hurt
that a human could
move in that cycle of thinking.
How they could sleep, how they could repeat it,
how they could profit from it.
It's beyond my capability to understand that
part of our psyche.
[Mariana Van Zeller] I have to agree.
I've spent much of my life embedded in black markets.
I'd rather not be there in death, too.
[music plays through credits]
Captioned by Cotter Media Group.