A mortuary worker, Candace Chapman Scott, 37, has been sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for selling human body parts, including fetuses, to a disturbing collector. Scott sold the remains from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Anatomical Gift Program to Jeremy Lee Pauley, a heavily tattooed and pierced man from Pennsylvania, whom she met in a Facebook group that openly discussed the sale of body parts. The case was revealed by Jonathan D. Ross, U.S. 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 discovering that the cremated remains of your child, handed back to you after their death, were not actually those of your child, because the FBI found the body in another state. This is the shocking truth for the family of ‘Baby Lux,’” said Jonathan D. Ross in a press release.
“Baby Lux, named ‘Lux Siloam’—meaning ‘light sent’—has now illuminated an evil and dark underworld of criminals trafficking stolen human bodies and body parts,” he added.
At the sentencing, Doneysha Smith, Lux’s mother, shared her heartbreak, revealing that she is haunted by the thought of “my son being sent around the mail like an Amazon package,” the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported.
Judge Brian S. Miller, overcome with emotion, wept before the sentencing and offered an apology.
The FBI called it a “truly incomprehensible and detestable crime.”
“This sentencing does not reverse the immeasurable damage caused to the victimized families, but the FBI and our partners will continue working to ensure justice is served for all,” said FBI Little Rock Special Agent in Charge Alicia D. Corder.
Jeremy Pauley, for his part, is on bond and awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty in Pennsylvania to conspiracy and interstate transportation of stolen property.
