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The Black Market Trade In Human Remains (Non-Medical; As Curios)

Mighty_Emperor

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'Ceramics' at federal auction turn out to be human skulls

'Ceramics' sold at federal auction in S. Florida turn out to be human skulls

Associated Press
Posted February 4 2004, 8:22 AM EST


CLEVELAND -- A collection of ceramics sold during a U.S. government auction in South Florida include human skulls, but their origin remains unknown.

Dr. Heather Raaf, chief deputy coroner in Cuyahoga County, said a forensic anthropologist examined the skulls Tuesday and determined they are human. She said each is a partial skull that may at some point have been buried.


``We had an anthropologist look at them and he said they are all definitely human, but they are old. They are not people who recently died. We think they had been buried and somehow unearthed, because they were weathered, and there was some moss and mold on them,'' Raaf said.

She said that in the skull parts observed there is ``no sign of violence or injury.'' The federal government is trying to check records to find out the source of the skulls, said Cherise Miles, a Chicago spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Miles said the items were sold Jan. 15 at an auction at the Broward Convention Center in Fort Lauderdale by auctioneering contractor EG&G Technical Services, which would have inspected and priced the lot identified as ``clay artifacts and assorted items.'' She said the skulls were part of a lot that sold for about
'Ceramics' sold at federal auction in S. Florida turn out to be human skulls

Associated Press
Posted February 4 2004, 8:22 AM EST


CLEVELAND -- A collection of ceramics sold during a U.S. government auction in South Florida include human skulls, but their origin remains unknown.

Dr. Heather Raaf, chief deputy coroner in Cuyahoga County, said a forensic anthropologist examined the skulls Tuesday and determined they are human. She said each is a partial skull that may at some point have been buried.


``We had an anthropologist look at them and he said they are all definitely human, but they are old. They are not people who recently died. We think they had been buried and somehow unearthed, because they were weathered, and there was some moss and mold on them,'' Raaf said.

She said that in the skull parts observed there is ``no sign of violence or injury.'' The federal government is trying to check records to find out the source of the skulls, said Cherise Miles, a Chicago spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Miles said the items were sold Jan. 15 at an auction at the Broward Convention Center in Fort Lauderdale by auctioneering contractor EG&G Technical Services, which would have inspected and priced the lot identified as ``clay artifacts and assorted items.'' She said the skulls were part of a lot that sold for about $1,000.

Britney Sheehan, a spokeswoman for EG&G in Miami, said Tuesday the contractor did not know skulls were in the lot. She said the items were provided by U.S. Customs officials.

``In the paperwork they were labeled as gifts,'' she said.

She did not know the origin.

``I'd say it's a 95 percent logical assumption it came from another country,'' she said.

Photos released Tuesday by police in Brook Park, a Cleveland suburb, show at least two skulls and a ceramic head.

The skulls were discovered Friday at a warehouse for Marc's discount stores in the Cleveland area. Warehouse employees called police when a carton of what they thought was holding ceramic figurines revealed bone where one had cracked.

But Raaf said only some of the figurines were intact and some were just skulls.
,000.

Britney Sheehan, a spokeswoman for EG&G in Miami, said Tuesday the contractor did not know skulls were in the lot. She said the items were provided by U.S. Customs officials.

``In the paperwork they were labeled as gifts,'' she said.

She did not know the origin.

``I'd say it's a 95 percent logical assumption it came from another country,'' she said.

Photos released Tuesday by police in Brook Park, a Cleveland suburb, show at least two skulls and a ceramic head.

The skulls were discovered Friday at a warehouse for Marc's discount stores in the Cleveland area. Warehouse employees called police when a carton of what they thought was holding ceramic figurines revealed bone where one had cracked.

But Raaf said only some of the figurines were intact and some were just skulls.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/broward/sfl-204skulls,0,5154600.story?coll=sfla-news-broward
 
Expanding on the above report:

Workers' fright was right: Skulls in box are human

02/04/04
Tasha Flournoy
Plain Dealer Reporter

The Cuyahoga County coroner's office confirmed Tuesday that skulls found by employees of Marc's discount stores are human.

Marc's thought it bought 50 cartons of toys and a carton of clay figurines at auction. What it didn't expect was a box containing human bones - 12 skulls, in fact - most of which had a ceramic coating.

Workers at the discount chain's warehouse in Brook Park called police Friday after discovering the bones in a box they thought contained clay handicrafts. Police later took the carton and skulls to the coroner.

Where the skulls came from remains a mystery.

"It could be weeks to figure out where they're from," said Dr. Heather Raaf, chief deputy coroner. "They're really unusual and weathered. They were painted and they weren't meant to look lifelike."

After consulting with a forensic anthropologist, Raaf said, the office determined that the bones were quite old and were once buried. Other specialists will be consulted to find out more about the skulls, she said.

Marc's paid $1,300 for 50 cartons of toys and what was thought to be ceramic figurines at a U.S. Customs auction Jan. 15 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The objects had been seized from unclaimed freight shipped into Miami. U.S. Customs is now trying to trace the source of the shipment, said Brook Park Detective James Tesar.

He said writing on the box suggests it came from South America.

Tesar was one of the officers who answered the call from the warehouse.

"We end up seeing a lot of things, but we looked at each other and said This is pretty weird,' " he said. "It's something that doesn't happen every day."

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

[email protected], 216-999-5739

http://www.cleveland.com/search/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1075895807310150.xml?ncounty_cuyahoga

Strikes me that they are anthropological/archaeological material (pos. stuff sent to the coroners after being unearthed from a building site?).

Emps
 
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Trail leads back to Peru

Skulls found before being sold at discount chain

Friday, February 6, 2004 Posted: 2313 GMT ( 7:13 AM HKT)




BROOK PARK, Ohio (AP) -- Human skulls encased in ceramic have been found among clay pots, baseballs and other items purchased at auction by an Ohio discount store chain.

The trail of the 12 skulls has led to Florida and Peru.

A warehouse employee of the Marc's chain found them while looking through a box purchased at auction January 15 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. A figurine fell and broke, disclosing a skull enshrouded in ceramic.

The box was among items that had been abandoned at a customs inspection point. It was shipped by air last May from Lima, Peru, to someone in Miami, apparently meant as a gift, according to Cherise Miles, a spokeswoman for the customs agency.

The name of the intended recipient was being withheld pending the investigation.

As for the sender, "We don't know if the person actually knew there were skulls," Miles said. That was under investigation, along with other unanswered questions about the origin of the skulls.

None had any sign of violence or injuries, according to assistant Cuyahoga County Coroner Heather Raaf, and some may have been buried at some point.

At the time of the January 30 discovery, the ceramic items were at least one week away from making the shelves at Marc's, a northeast Ohio chain of discount stores where closeouts and low prices are favored over shopper comforts.

Marc's regularly stocks items purchased at auction, including those attended by owner Marc Glassman, said Debbie List, administrative assistant at the chain.

"He attends auctions all the time, everywhere," she said.

Finding a ceramic item shaped like a head might not prompt a second glance at Marc's, where you can find men's underwear at the end of the frozen foods, flea collars hanging next to California wines and a chest-high display of unwrapped dog chews. Over in the corner, tropical birds squawk from a room-sized cage.

Police in Brook Park, a working-class Cleveland suburb, released photos of one of the ceramic-encased skulls. It resembled a head with a biker's tightly fitting helmet and wide purple bands down the sides of the face, lips pursed closed.

The skulls include at least one of a child and showed evidence of bindings, according to Raaf. The dried-out look indicated the skulls were aged, possibly for many years.

Investigators wouldn't say whether they were looking into possession of the skulls as a crime.

The coroner asked an anthropologist, Bruce Latimer of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, to inspect the skulls. He was directed by authorities to withhold public comment, museum spokeswoman Gail Takacs said Friday.

The Peruvian embassy in Washington, D.C., didn't respond to a request for comment on the discovery.

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/US/Midwest/02/06/skulls.found.ap/index.html

Picture attached.

Emps
 
Nepal arrests 'skull-smugglers'

By Charles Haviland
BBC, Kathmandu

Police in Nepal have arrested two men carrying 250 human skulls.

They were detained near Birgunj, a town near the border with India, apparently trying to smuggle the skulls into Nepal in bags.

Under questioning, the men said they had bought them at a price of nearly $1.50 each in the neighbouring Indian state of Bihar.

They were planning to sell them for about three times that price in the town of Bouddha outside Kathmandu.

This is a major centre of Tibetan Buddhism, a religion which does use skulls in some of its traditions.

Charges likely

According to the would-be smugglers, however, the skulls might be embellished with gold or silver there and then exported on out of the country.

The police source said that although he had seen one or two cases of skull smuggling before, there had been nothing on this scale.

He added that the skulls appeared to have been dug out of the ground and many had been cut in two.

Nepal has no laws against the trafficking of skulls, but the men are likely to be charged under a public nuisance act.

Police in Kathmandu said they too had come across isolated incidents like this, but the traffic had tended to be going the other way out of Nepal.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/south_asia/3715039.stm

Published: 2004/05/14 14:32:15 GMT

© BBC MMIV
 
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Friday, June 11, 2004 · Last updated 7:28 p.m. PT

Five mummified skulls found in Peru mail

By DREW BENSON
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER



A Peruvian postal worker holds one of five skulls of the Paracas culture that a Peruvian tried to illegally mail to a collector in the United States on Friday, June 11, 2004, in Lima, Peru. The skulls are believed to be 2,300 years old. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

LIMA, Peru -- Peruvian customs agents opening suspicious packages found five ancient skulls from a pre-Inca culture that someone tried to mail to California, authorities said Friday.

The mummified skulls, estimated to be as old as 2,700 years, turned up during inspections June 5 and 6. Customs agents put the five packages through an X-ray machine because they emitted a disagreeable odor.

Shipping claims outside the boxes said they contained gifts; inside, fake government certificates claimed the skulls were on authorized loan for anthropological study and cultural exhibition.

Authorities did not identify the sender or the intended recipient of the skulls.

It is illegal to take or ship historical artifacts out of Peru without government approval, but laws have done little to discourage the robbery of archaeological sites in this poor nation.

Archaeologist Guillermo Cock, who led a team that discovered more than 2,200 mummies in Lima between 1999 and 2001, told The Associated Press that grave robbery has increased in Peru amid a rising population and high unemployment.

Thieves usually search burial sites for gold, textiles and ceramics, he said. "This business of the mummified skulls seems macabre to me," Cock said. "We excavate and study human remains, but we don't collect them like trophies ... we are human beings after all."

Archeologists from the National Institute of Culture determined that the skulls date from around 700 B.C. to the Paracas - one of more than a dozen cultures that preceded the Incas. The centurylong Inca reign ended with its defeat by Spanish conquistadors some 500 years ago.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/aplatin_story.asp?category=1102&slug=Peru Mummified Skulls
 
UK surgeons condemn foetus trade

Dead babies are being traded for thousands of British pounds by a secretive network of collectors who prize them as trophies.

'The children, who were either stillborn or aborted as foetuses, are being kept in people's homes after being sold by medical institutions or schools that are closing down.

Specimens are changing hands for more than £5000 ($A12,988) each.

The Royal College of Surgeons of England described the trade, which is legal, as "horrific" and "wholly inappropriate".

Simon Chaplin, a senior curator of the Royal College's museum collections, said: "I am absolutely horrified at the idea that such things are being bought and sold on the open market and that individuals want to collect such things in their homes.

"These things exist in medical institutions as collections of anatomic specimens traditionally to be used for teaching purposes, and are not regarded as collectors' curiosities. I am very disappointed to learn that some schools are selling off their exhibits to private individuals. It is wholly inappropriate."

The trade in aborted and stillborn babies is conducted clandestinely but the Sunday Telegraph found some of those involved by posing as a potential buyer.

One of the traders, Robert Hudson, 38, who also collects human bones and the remains of various animals, does not openly display his collection of late-term foetuses, which includes a two-headed baby and various other deformed remains.

All his specimens were, he said, from the Victorian era. He also has a 12-week aborted foetus.

Referring to his two-headed foetus, Mr Hudson said that he bought it several years ago for a few hundred pounds for his own collection. But he said he believed that its market value would now be much higher.

"There is a pair of Siamese twins at the moment, and £5500 was the last bid I heard, which I thought was quite cheap."

Mr Hudson, who was convicted last March of smuggling the skulls of endangered monkeys into Britain from Africa, said he had little interest in fully developed foetuses, but that other buyers did.

Current guidelines - introduced in 2003 following a report into a scandal five years ago at Alder Hey Hospital, Merseyside, where organs from dead children were removed without the parents' permission - state that the consent of the patient or relatives must be obtained before human tissue can be removed and retained.

These rules are due to be tightened under the Human Tissue Bill, which is before Parliament. Human tissue that is more than 100 years old is exempt from the existing regulations, however, and will not be covered by the new legislation.'
 
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Mystery of the severed skulls......

Mystery of the severed skulls grips China.

The grisly discovery of 121 human skulls, many with their tops sawn off, has puzzled Chinese police and caused a frenzy of speculation.

The skulls were found by a farmer in a forested ravine in a part of the poor north-western province of Gansu, which is inhabited by ethnic Tibetans.

Police have confirmed that the skulls are human and are of "recent origin", as suggested by the fact that some had skin and hair still attached.

But officials have refused to give further details, which has given rise to theories of their origin that range from medical experiments on brains to an attempt to cash in on a fashion for skullcap-shaped ashtrays.

A further twist came with a find in a landfill site in the same province of two arms belonging to a child believed to be aged between five and eight. The arms appeared to have been cooked with chilli and ginger.

According to local newspapers, the skulls were found on a river bank last week in plastic bags along with fur and bones. At first it was suggested they could have belonged to monkeys.

Police and forensic scientists have now ruled out any medical reason for cutting off the tops of the skulls, although they said this had clearly happened after death.

The South China Morning Post linked the finds to rumours of cannibalism in another part of China three years ago, which were firmly denied at the time.

But the Beijing News quoted a nameless local official saying that the skulls might be related to a trade in handicrafts.

The newspaper said imitation skullcaps were being sold as ashtrays in a well-known market in the capital, where a seller claimed that, lined with silver, "the real thing" commanded high prices from private buyers.

link

edited by TheQuixote: created hyperlink to prevent forum break
 
Bloody hell! If true it kind of puts the old Victorian elephant's foot umbrella stand nastiness into perspective.
 
Chinese police probe skulls find

Chinese police probe skulls find
By Rupert Wingfield-Hayes
BBC News, Beijing



Police in China are investigating whether the discovery of more than 120 human skulls may be part of a growing trade in macabre handicrafts.
The skulls were found last week wrapped in plastic bags and dumped in a ravine on the edge of the Tibetan plateau.

All of the skulls were missing their top half, which appeared to have been sawn off.

China's media and internet have buzzed with wild speculation about the grizzly discovery in the remote north-west.

Are the bags full of sawn-off skulls the gruesome product of a mass murderer or perhaps the detritus of some grim medical experiment?

Both have now been ruled out. The most likely answer is, if anything, even more bizarre.

Artefacts in demand

Investigators think the skulls are the leftovers from a surging industry in ghoulish handicrafts.

The 121 hacked up skulls were dumped close to the borders of Tibet. Ceremonial bowls made from human skulls have a long tradition in some branches of Tibetan Buddhism.

The huge growth in tourism to Tibet has apparently led to an equally large increase in demand for Buddhist artefacts.

In the markets of Lhasa, bowls made from fake skulls sell for two or three pounds each. But bowls made from genuine human skulls are said to fetch hundreds of pounds.

The question that so far no one has been able to answer is where did the skulls come from in the first place, and did their owners die from natural or unnatural causes?

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/w ... 885108.stm

Published: 2006/04/06 18:27:30 GMT

© BBC MMVI
 
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This person was indicted for attempting to sell whole vintage fetuses (as opposed to fetal tissue).
Colorado woman indicted in attempted sale of 1920s fetuses

A Colorado woman suspected of trying to sell three human fetuses from the 1920s and a fetal skeleton online has been indicted in California on charges of violating a U.S. law prohibiting the transfer of human fetal tissue.

Emily Suzanne Cain, 38, pleaded not guilty to charges Tuesday, KUSA-TV reported .

The case has been delayed until Nov. 20 in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, according to court records.

The fetuses are believed to be from stillborn infants from the 1920s, court records said.

Cain attempted in October 2018 to mail a package from Canon City in central Colorado to an address in the United Kingdom ...

The package, labeled “school teaching aids and T-shirts,” caught the attention of U.S. Postal Service workers who noticed there was no signature on a customs form certifying the package did not contain dangerous contents ...

An X-ray of the package revealed a human-like shape ...

Cain posted on Facebook that she acquired the fetuses from a university lab collection and was selling them for $20,000, the complaint said.

The specimens were traced to Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, the complaint said.

University policy calls for specimens that are no longer needed to be cremated and not sold, university officials told investigators. The university is cooperating with authorities, a spokesperson said. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.apnews.com/8e83ca4c28b64b189c94fdb76d35b1d8
 
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This lengthy Live Science investigative report provides a wide-ranging survey of the traffic in human remains that are marketed on social media.
Looted skulls and human remains are being sold in black markets on Facebook

In 2013, an American collector visiting Tunisia entered the Sousse catacombs — an ancient necropolis that holds some of the oldest Christian burials in the world — and stole a skull with a "very dark ancient patina" (as he described it) during renovations of the catacombs. The collector put the skull up for sale in a private Facebook group for $550, telling his tale of looting in the sales listing.

Other members of the group were excited by the looted skull, with some posting comments about how "beautiful" it was. What the collector may not have realized was that the group wasn't as private as it seemed. A Live Science reporter posing as a person interested in skulls had infiltrated the private Facebook group, and several other groups like it, and for 10 months kept track of human remains that were being sold.

The Live Science investigation unlocked a world in which human remains are often sold with little information about their origins — raising questions about how they were acquired. While the Sousse catacomb skull was exceptional in that the collector openly admitted he looted it, Live Science documented countless other human remains with no back stories, leaving open the question: How many of these remains were looted or stolen? ...

FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/human-bone-trade-facebook.html
 
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