The Big Lie
Truth can sometimes be stranger than fiction, as one man found out in a horrific way. It was a sobering realization when he did. He had never been an anarchist or someone who always felt pessimistic about Uncle Sam.
He tended to believe the best in every situation and did so again when he decided to honor his grandmother’s last wish. When he learned the truth, he felt sick to his stomach. She was a proud woman and would have been horrified had she known her true fate.
A Sad Situation
Jim Stauffer, like most people, loved his mother dearly. It was difficult for him to watch her grow older and weaker with age. He tried his best to provide good care for her.
She wasn’t just his mother, but a grandmother to his kids and a great-grandmother too. However, the years hadn’t been kind to Doris, and she ended up in a tragic situation.
A Terrible Choice
Getting older is difficult enough as it is. As a person ages, they are a host of physical ailments that one usually must contend with. However, this can often be even more distressing when the mind starts to deteriorate too.
Jim faced this horrible reality when his mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. He was devastated at seeing his mother’s mind slowly fade away. Soon, he was left with a difficult decision.
Special Care
Facing the reality of his mother’s health disintegrating, Jim and his family made the difficult decision to check her into a hospice facility. This would ensure that she got the best kind of care under the circumstances.
Sadly, after entering his facility, Doris’s condition worsened as expected. It wasn’t long before she succumbed to her disease and passed away, aged 74.
A Huge Loss
Jim and his family were greatly saddened by her passing. After all the arrangements were made for her funeral, the family began to think about the next steps.
Watching his mom suffer so much from her illness affected Jim a lot. He knew his mom would never want others to suffer the same way. Jim made a big decision that he believed was a great way to honor his mother’s memory.
The Donation
Jim realized that donating his mother’s body for medical research purposes would help scientists in their quest to find a cure for Alzheimer's. He began to make inquiries about the best place to do this.
Residents of Arizona, Jim and his family came across a company called the Biological Research Center (BRC) in Maricopa County. The family thought they were finding closure but had no idea this was the beginning of a nightmare.
The Story
Jim was told that his mom suffered from a rarer mutation of Alzheimer’s and that it would be beneficial for researchers to study her body. Trusting the BRC’s recommendation, Jim went ahead with donating his mother’s body to them.
After a few days, Jim received his mother’s ashes and was informed that her brain had been studied. The family found peace knowing that her death was not in vain. However, they soon found out it was all a lie.
The Story
When the Reuters news agency began investigating a growing story about corpse trafficking, Jim had no idea that his mother would be a central feature of it.
The investigation found that the BRC was involved in fraudulent activities relating to donations of deceased bodies that it accepted. However, this wasn’t the most shocking part.
The Other Party
Instead of using the donated bodies for medical research, the Reuter’s report found that the BRC was actually selling the bodies. In some cases, they received upwards of $5000.00 per body.
When Jim found out this news, he was devastated. What made it worse was the realization of who the bodies were being sold to.
Uncle Sam
As the plot thickened, Jim learned that the main party that bought the bodies from the BRC was the U.S government. Jim’s mom’s body was just one of many others that had suffered this fate.
The story continued to grow, the net slowly tightened around BRC and their illegal activities. However, the worst was yet to come.
The Truth
Jim, and many other families like his, were contacted by Reuters and informed of what their investigation had found. The reality was shocking and highly distressing.
Jim now knew the truth. His mother’s body had never been used for medical research. It was bought by the U.S military and used for a much more controversial purpose.
IED Testing
The investigation revealed that the military used Doris Stauffer’s body to conduct IED testing. This meant that her body was subjected to blast detonations to study the impact such devices had on a human to improve safety.
The military had good intentions of improving the safety of soldiers deployed to regions where IED attacks were prevalent. However, Jim had never consented to his mother’s body being used this way.
Deception
According to Jim, the worst part about the entire cover-up was that the forms he filled out spoke of such things. "There was actually wording on this paperwork about performing this stuff."
Performing these medical tests that may involve explosions, and we said no. We checked the 'no' box on all that." The big question now was what should happen to the BRC?
The Aftermath
The donation center ceased operations after the Reuter’s story broke. It was raided by the FBI when the truth came to light. Apparently, a host of horrific discoveries were made there, including a cache of human body parts.
The BRC’s, Stephen Gore, pleaded guilty to certain charges and is currently out on probation. However, this was scant consolation for families like Jim’s, and many of them decided to take action.
The Suit
Following the revelations unearthed by Reuters, many of the affected families joined a class-action lawsuit against BRC.
According to Jim, Gore had stolen "a lot more than my mom's body" with his actions. The story is a chilling reminder of the disturbing lengths many people will go to for money. In order to protect the privacy of those depicted, some names, locations, and identifying characteristics have been changed and are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblances to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental