Employee who found 3 severed heads from donor bodies next to his desk let go after he alleged misconduct
A man who used to deliver cadavers for the Anatomical Gift Association of Illinois is now out of a job after he alleged mishandling of donated bodies at the nonprofit.
Dale Wheatley, 37, told the Tribune he is looking for food delivery jobs after he was let go June 7, a day after he went public with claims that he came into work to find a horrific scene: sage burning and three severed heads on a plastic container by his desk.
Wheatley believes the heads were left in retaliation for disclosing concerns about the mishandling and poor conditions of cadavers to his supervisors in late May. In his near five years with AGA, he said he’d never seen anything like what he saw that morning.
But AGA Executive Vice President William O’Connor on Friday continued to deny any maltreatment accusations, and said handling body parts of “donors,” or those who have donated their bodies for medical use, is part of Wheatley’s routine job responsibilities.
“Dale is a disgruntled employee,” O’Connor said.
O’Connor said anyone looking at AGA practices from a distance would be shocked due to the nature of the work, and that Wheatley was failing to perform. He strongly disagreed with Wheatley’s allegations, and said AGA staff are still in the process of figuring out how to respond legally.
“What the AGA has done is defensible,” he said. “It’s a small staff that we have but I think we’re proud of what we do, and we certainly are committed to medical education.”
Still, the grisly allegations have shocked families of deceased loved ones who have donated their bodies to the AGA. After Wheatley went public, a man who says he’s the son of a donor whose head was one of the three left by Wheatley’s desk reached out to the Tribune. The man asked his name be withheld for privacy, saying he has yet to share this “ugly business” with his children.
“It’s not just a betrayal of an agreement between them and us. It’s a betrayal of an understanding and a convention that we humans all have for each other. We don’t abuse bodies and human remains,” the man said. Wheatley confirmed to the Tribune that the man’s mother was one of the heads left next to his desk.
According to the man, his mother decided to offer her body for science as “an affirmation of her zest for life, her belief in the community that she belonged to and that she could contribute to it.”
Linda Jenkins, 79, told the Tribune she was planning to donate her body to AGA, but will rescind her donor enrollment form after hearing about alleged misconduct. Jenkins is a retired theater professor at Northwestern who lives in Brookfield.
“I would love to go through this process if I had confidence in it. And I would encourage more people to do it,” Jenkins said. “I made some assumptions that now I realize I should not have made.”
Founded in 1918, the not-for-profit allows families of the deceased to donate bodies to help medical students train at eight universities across the state. AGA writes on its website that it aims to “help donors and their families make their donations with the confidence that the AGA will observe the highest standards of responsiveness, respect, privacy and security.”
Mistreatment of bodies makes them unfit for research, said Wheatley, a father of three kids — ages 11, 6 and 1 — who is now applying for unemployment benefits.
“I didn’t foresee all of this happening,” he said. “Stuff wasn’t being done right at AGA and I just wasn’t being heard, and it led to this series of events.”
Wheatley’s involvement began May 23 when Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine anatomy lab manager Casey Tilden sent an email complaining that some donors were covered with flies or contorted in such a way that they were unfit for use. The email, which was provided to the Tribune, said a few recent deliveries had feet and hands showing signs of decomposition.
Wheatley passed on the complaint to his supervisors, and the heads were left at his desk the following morning, May 24.
A Northwestern spokesperson did not answer questions in an email, but did provide a statement.
“Feinberg believes anatomical donation is an invaluable component of the education, training, and research that takes place in the academic medical environment, and students and physicians are always mindful of and grateful for body donations and acknowledge them as a lasting contribution to their education,” said Northwestern University vice president for global marketing and communications Jon Yates in a statement.
Wheatley said Northwestern was not the only university to file a complaint. He said he had been trying to change protocol for months before the day the heads showed up on his desk, which he thinks was a message of retaliation in response to his concerns.
He said he doesn’t want people to lose track of AGA’s mission.
“We need doctors. We need people in this field for my sake, my kids’ sake, advancing science. But it needs to be done by the right people,” Wheatley said.
Wheatley has described the inside of AGA as “wet and muggy” with “poor ventilation.” As the former manager of the “rack room,” or the room where donors are held at AGA, he said there is a buildup of thick goo under bodies, holes in the wall, and frequent rats and other pests.
AGA denied the Tribune’s requests to see inside. Members of the AGA board of directors declined to comment.
Wheatley said he used to drive around to medical institutions, loading and unloading body parts from the tiered racking system in the AGA van. A QR system is used to identify body parts, which are embalmed and distributed for study purposes.
There is a description of the donation process on AGA’s website. On the enrollment form, donors have the ability to mark whether they want their ashes returned, no ashes, or to opt for the perpetual donation option — allowing part or all of the body to be permanently preserved for teaching purposes.
Monday afternoon, Wheatley sat in his cousin William’s funeral home in Calumet City, where he got his start in the industry driving for the funeral home before he began at AGA. “Let all that you do be done in love,” read a sign on the wall.
Despite the job anxiety that keeps him up at night, he has no regrets about speaking out about what happened, he said. He is adamant about the need for a complete overhaul of operations at AGA and some kind of regulation or system of accountability.
“I want people to be able to donate their bodies, and then get what AGA is telling me that they’re getting,” said Wheatley.
His wife is a manager at Extra Space Storage, and the two of them are working for DoorDash to make ends meet. They had plans to travel this summer and now it is more difficult, he said.
Wheatley isn’t the only employee to express concern with AGA workplace practices.
Jasmyn Du Bois, who was the head embalmer at AGA from roughly 2008 to 2013, reported similar experiences to the Tribune.
“When I got there, it was filthy, it was a mess,” she said. “I spent months scrubbing everything down. I had to bring in a crime scene cleanup crew to clean up the prep room.”
Du Bois said she spent years developing cleaning and embalming protocols, and that conditions Wheatley reported are consistent with conditions she experienced when she first started working there. But despite the long hours Du Bois worked and the intensity of the job, she said she found the work meaningful and important.
“I took a lot of pride in the work that I did. I mean, I loved my job,” she said.
Wheatley doesn’t know what exactly he’ll do next, but said he knows he wants to do something related to transit, and preferably outside.
“I just want to be able to find some peace,” he said.
David Fish, an employment lawyer and partner at Fish Potter Bolaños P.C., filed complaints on Wheatley’s behalf following the head and sage incident with the Cook County medical examiner’s office, Illinois Department of Public Health and Illinois Department of Financial & Professional Regulation. Fish asked for an investigation into embalming techniques, to avoid scenarios such as Tilden’s reported decaying appendages.
Fish has not heard anything back about his complaint, but said he wants state and local government agencies to make it a priority.
Wheatley said AGA delivery work can be “grueling.” Since his last day at AGA, he has been spending time with his family, and hopes to seek counseling. Lately, when he’s not thinking about his work at AGA, he said he thinks about the future of his kids.
