Human skulls being sold on Facebook filled Kentucky home, FBI says. ‘My dead friends’
Approximately 40 human body parts were found in the home of a Kentucky man, who the FBI says was a part of a multi-state scheme to buy and sell human remains.
The scheme, reported by McClatchy News in June, led to the initial arrests of six people. They included a mortuary worker in Little Rock, Arkansas, and the manager of the morgue at Harvard Medical School.
Some of the body parts stolen from morgues in Massachusetts and Arkansas ended up in the Mt. Washington, Kentucky, home, officials said.
The Kentucky man, according to the FBI, used the pseudonym William Burke on Facebook. Burke was a serial killer in the 1800s in Scotland and sold victims’ bodies to an influential lecturer, federal authorities say.
Under the Burke alias, the Mt. Washington man sold body parts through Facebook, according to details in the criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky. A Pennsylvania man he is accused of selling human remains to has since been arrested.
The Pennsylvania man, McClatchy News reported in 2022, had “human brains, heart, livers, skin and lungs” in his home, according to the Cumberland County District Attorney’s Office. The body parts were stowed in 5-gallon buckets, police said.
When FBI agents went to the Louisville-area home, they asked the 39-year-old man if anyone else was there. He replied, “only my dead friends,” according to the FBI.
Inside the home, agents found 40 human skulls and other body parts, the complaint says.
“The skulls were decorated around the furniture,” according to the complaint. “One skull had a head scarf around it. One skull was located on the mattress where (he) slept.”
An attorney for the man could not immediately be reached for comment by McClatchy News.
The Harvard manager had been secretly harvesting human organs and was selling them across the country, officials said in previous McClatchy News reporting.
“We are so very sorry for the pain this news will cause for our anatomical donors’ families and loved ones,” George Daley, dean of the faculty of medicine at the Harvard Medical School, wrote in a June 14 statement. “The reported incidents are a betrayal of HMS and, most importantly, each of the individuals who altruistically chose to will their bodies to HMS through the Anatomical Gift Program to advance medical education and research.”
A Little Rock mortuary worker also involved in the scheme stole and sold four brains, three hearts, two testicles, a penis and “one large belly button,” according to an April indictment obtained by McClatchy News.
The complaint mentions both the Harvard morgue manager and Little Rock mortuary worker, but it is unclear how the Kentucky man obtained the body parts. Authorities did say a Harvard Medical School bag was found inside his home.
The FBI said the Mt. Washington man used Facebook to sell human remains as recently as June. He has only been charged with unlawful possession of a firearm.
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