Two owners of a funeral home in Valencia, Spain, have been accused of selling dead bodies to university research departments for profit.
Most of the bodies involved in this harrowing scheme belonged to people without any family and reportedly came from hospitals and retirement homes.
The two owners and two employees at the funeral parlour reportedly involved in this racket have also been accused by Spanish police of helping the organisations receiving the bodies to dispose of them after they had been studied on.
The suspects have been accused of doing so by either incinerating these bodies or scattering dismembered parts in other coffins destined for cremation.
The suspects allegedly sold at least 11 bodies for research, each at around £1,026 (€1,200).
A police statement said the suspects “falsified documentation to get the bodies from hospitals and retirement homes in order to later sell them to universities for research for €1,200 [£1,026] per corpse”.
The statement also read: “They billed one university €5,040 [£4,312] for incinerating 11 bodies after being studied, which were not accounted for in the invoices of any of the crematoriums in the city.”
Police launched its investigation in early 2023, after reportedly discovering that two employees at the funeral home had allegedly taken a body from the morgue of a hospital to a university rather than giving it a proper burial.
The body reportedly belonged to a man meant to be buried in his home town, and the burial had been paid for by the local council.
However, the deceased had been sold without anyone’s consent using false documents, police found.
The police statement also mentioned the case of an elderly man with impaired mental faculties being allegedly persuaded by the suspects to donate his body to science.
The statement read: “That donor form said the body should be sent to a certain medical facility, but in the end it was taken to another” which “paid more money”.
The suspects are now facing charges of fraud and falsification of documents.
Valencia, where the suspects allegedly operated, welcomes millions of tourists every year, and in 2023 was voted in a poll by consumer organisation Which? as a favourite by British travellers.
