A mortuary worker has been sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for hawking body parts including fetuses to a sicko collector covered in face tattoos and piercings.
Candace Chapman Scott, 37, sold the human remains from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Anatomical Gift Program to Jeremy Lee Pauley, a heavily pierced Pennsylvania man she met on a Facebook group that “openly discussed the sale of body parts,” according to Jonathan D. Ross, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.
At her sentencing, Judge Brian S. Miller called her crimes “some of the worst I’ve ever seen” and sentenced Ross, of Little Rock, for transporting stolen human body parts out of the state and conspiracy to commit mail fraud, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported.
Last April, she pleaded guilty to the charges.
Scott’s disgusting deeds, which included selling a skull, brain, arm, ear, several lungs, hearts, breasts, a belly button, and testicles, along with other parts — occurred between October 2021 and July 15, 2022, prosecutors said.
Pauley, 42, a self-described “oddities collector,” paid her $10,625 for 24 body part boxes, part of a twisted underground national network of body snatching from Harvard Medical School and the Arkansas mortuary.
When investigators searched Scott’s home, they found several body parts and she admitted to bagging them at her job.
The heartless morgue worker even told Pauley that the wrong ashes from a cremated body would be returned “to the parents of the deceased fetuses,” prosecutors said.
“Imagine learning that the cremated remains of your child given to you after their death were not actually those of your child, because instead, the FBI recovered the body of that child in another state. That is the shocking truth that happened in this case for the family of “Baby Lux,” Ross, said in a press release.
“Baby Lux was named ‘Lux Siloam,’ which means ‘light sent,’ and now his light has illuminated an evil and dark underworld of criminals who engage in the trafficking of stolen human bodies and body parts,” he added.
At the sentencing, Doneysha Smith, Lux’s mother, told the judge she was heartbroken after hearing of the heinous crimes.
She’s haunted at night by “my son being sent around the mail like an Amazon package,” the Gazette reported.
Miller, meanwhile, sobbed before her sentencing and apologized.
The FBI called it a “truly incomprehensible and detestable crime.”
“This sentencing does not reverse the immeasurable damage that has been caused to the victimized families, however, the FBI and our partners will continuously work to ensure justice is served for all,” said FBI Little Rock Special Agent in Charge Alicia D. Corder.
For his part, Pauley is on bond awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty in Pennsylvania to conspiracy and interstate transportation of stolen property, according to the Gazette.
