A creepy mortuary worker in Alabama was sentenced to 15 years in prison last week for throwing away body parts — including fetuses — to a sick collector covered in facial tattoos and piercings.
Candace Chapman Scott, 37, sold the human remains from the University of Arkansas 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 on Thursday, Judge Brian S. Miller called her crimes “some of the worst I have ever seen” and convicted Ross, of Little Rock, of transporting stolen human body parts out of state and conspiracy to commit mail fraud. the The Democratic Gazette in Arkansas reports this.
Last April, she pleaded guilty to the charges.
Scott’s disgusting acts — which included the sale of a skull, brain, arm, ear, several lungs, hearts, breasts, a belly button and testicles, along with other parts — took place between October 2021 and July 15, 2022, prosecutors said.
Pauley, 42, a self-described “odds collector,” paid her $10,625 for 24 boxes of body parts — part of a twisted underground national body-snatching network 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 while at work.
The heartless mortuary worker even told Pauley that the wrong ashes from a cremated body would be returned “to the parents of the deceased fetuses,” according to prosecutors.
“Imagine discovering that the cremated remains of your child that you received after their death were not really those of your child because the FBI recovered that child’s body in another state instead. That’s the shocking truth that happened in this case for the family of “Baby Lux,” Ross said in a news release.
“Baby Lux was given the name ‘Lux Siloam’, which means ‘light sent’, and now his light has illuminated an evil and dark underworld of criminals involved in trafficking stolen human bodies and body parts,” he added.
At sentencing, Doneysha Smith, Lux’s mother, told the judge she was heartbroken after hearing of the horrific crimes.
She is chased at night by “my son who is sent around in the mail like an Amazon package,” the Gazette reported.
Miller, meanwhile, sobbed before her conviction and apologized.
The FBI called it a “truly incomprehensible and detestable crime.”
“This conviction does not undo the immeasurable harm caused to the affected families, but the FBI and our partners will work continuously to ensure justice is served for all,” said FBI Little Rock Special Agent in Charge Alicia D .Corder.
Pauley, for his part, is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty in Pennsylvania to conspiracy and interstate transportation of stolen property, the Gazette reported.
