The Body Broker

Stephen Gore opened the Biological Resource Center in Phoenix in 2003 and began taking bodies about two years later. Families who had just lost someone were told a donation would go toward research into cancer, leukemia and Alzheimer’s. The consent forms let donors rule out military or destructive testing. Over nine years the company took in roughly 5,000 bodies and shipped out more than 20,000 parts.

Bodies were taken apart with ordinary shop tools and sold by the piece. Reuters later documented donors whose paperwork barred military use whose remains went to Army contractors anyway. Jim Stauffer donated his mother, Doris, in 2013, believing her body would go to Alzheimer’s research. A box of ashes reached him ten days later; it held the cremated remains of one hand, and the rest of her had been sold for blast testing. Conrad Patrick, a retired factory worker from Mohave Valley who died that same year, was divided into seven pieces.

The FBI raided the building in January 2014 and removed about ten tons of frozen remains, counted at 1,755 body parts. Gore pleaded guilty in 2015 to one count of illegally conducting an enterprise and was given four years of probation with a deferred prison term, plus $122,000 in restitution to the Defense Department. On November 20, 2019, a Maricopa County jury awarded ten families $58 million, $50 million of it punitive.