A new development has unfolded in the case against Arthur and Elizabeth Rathburn, the now-estranged married couple charged earlier this year for renting diseased human body parts to medical and dental students.
From January 2007 to December 2013, authorities say the cadaver-dealing duo ran International Biological in Detroit. The company purchased donated bodies from biological resource centers and rented them to researchers. The couple lied to their customers, saying the bodies were disease-free when they knew the remains had tested positive for hepatitis and HIV, among other diseases.
Last week, Ms. Rathburn agreed to a plea deal — she pleaded guilty to wire fraud and agreed to testify against Mr. Rathburn, according to The Washington Post. As part of the deal, she admitted that in 2012, Ms. Rathburn took body parts contaminated with hepatitis B and HIV to an American Society of Anesthesiologists conference in Washington and claimed they were disease-free.
Here are six things to know about the Michigan couple and their case.
1. Mr. Rathburn was a former employee of the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, where he was responsible for tagging corpses and setting them up for students. Sometimes he was responsible for arranging the shipment of the bodies to other medical schools, as well as to brokers. Mr. Rathburn was eventually fired from his job at the university for allegedly selling bodies for profit.
2. According to the Detroit Free Press, in 1989, Mr. Rathburn became an independent body broker. He dismembered the bodies with a chainsaw, stored the parts and prepared them for shipping, while Ms. Rathburn took orders from customers, according to The Washington Post.
3. Mr. Rathburn attracted public attention when he was mentioned in a book called Body Brokers: Inside America's Underground Trade in Human Remains, but it wasn't until federal authorities caught wind of "bizarre shipments arriving for Rathburn at Metro airport, including a bucket full of human heads that arrived from Israel one year," that they began investigating him, according to the report.
4. Mr. and Ms. Rathburn "sometimes obtained diseased remains from their suppliers at a reduced cost, due to the fact that end users of human remains generally reject infectious bodies and body parts for use in medical or dental training," the indictment read, according to the report. The couple then "falsely [represented] to those customers that the remains were free of certain infectious diseases," the indictment said.
5. Court documents stated Mr. Rathburn increased profitability by not complying with standardized sanitation practices. For instance, he dismembered the bodies without taking sanitary precautions. He also "stored human heads by stacking them directly on top of each other without any protective barrier, apparently disregarding any risk of cross-contamination between infectious and non-infectious remains," the indictment read, according to the report. Pools of frozen blood and bodily fluids were found in the freezers.
6. The Rathburns were indicted in January on 13 counts, including wire fraud, aiding and abetting, transporting hazardous material and making false statements. If convicted, Mr. Rathburn could face up to 20 years in prison. Under the plea deal, Ms. Rathburn agreed to pay $55,225 in restitution to the American Society of Anesthesiologists. Her sentencing is set for July 18. She faces up to 10 months in prison, according to the report.