The Boston Globe
The Harvard morgue scandal revealed a group of oddities collectors.
SALEM — Mike Vitka acquired his first human cranium from a dentist’s daughter.
A long time in the past, Vitka had a pal in faculty whose dad possessed a well-kept medical instance cranium. It boasted a full head of enamel — as all the perfect skulls do — and Vitka cherished it. When the pal’s father died years later, she gifted it to him.
Right now, Vitka says, the cranium serves as “the jewel” of a group that has grown to incorporate a further human cranium, bought for $250 from an oddities store in New York Metropolis, in addition to a human skeleton purchased at public sale from an Odd Fellows fraternal order put up that was going beneath. (The bones arrived in Salem from Maine, strapped to the again of a pal’s automotive in a ceremonial coffin.)
As Vitka defined just lately, a grinning human cranium atop a pile of books in a single’s workplace “actually units the temper.”
Among the many extra shocking points of the continued Harvard College morgue scandal — through which a longtime medical faculty worker is accused by federal authorities of stealing human physique components and promoting them to a slew of consumers — is the revelation that there are those that aspire to acquire and acquire such issues.
In contrast to related instances which have garnered consideration nationally lately, the alleged recipients appeared to not be black market sellers motivated solely by revenue. Relatively, at the very least among the implicated consumers seem like a part of a community of fringe collectors who sought the specimens, partially, for their very own collections.
Certainly, lengthy earlier than federal authorities set their sights on Harvard, a subset of the so-called oddities group had been working inside this market of the grisly and morose. It’s a world the place issues corresponding to embalming provides, historic medical units — and, sure, human stays — will be extremely coveted, and legally obtained.
“Whereas it’s a darkish factor for some individuals, for different individuals it’s making their day to get one thing they’ll’t get anyplace else,” mentioned Leslie Letourneau, whose Coventry, R.I., store — Sweet’s Curiosities & Classic — at the moment sells mortuary make-up kits, an 1800s embalming desk, and a century-old medical package nonetheless containing poisons.
And it’s a market that seems to be increasing.
In the intervening time, the Oddities and Curiosities Expo, which advertises “preserved specimens” and “animal skulls/bones,” is making its method throughout the USA, slated to make stops in a dozen cities within the coming months. A smattering of brick-and-mortar oddities outlets have cropped up all through New England. And on an oddities-centered Reddit group, customers can peruse pictures of an array of human stays obtainable on the market — together with a human cranium with “customized carrying case” — or just search recommendation on repairs.
“Only a normal query,” requested one person, “how [do] I get bones to cease smelling?”
In explaining their pursuit of such issues, collectors supply a wide range of motivations, from preserving historical past to securing gadgets that can be utilized in creative initiatives or design. Within the search final week of a Kentucky condo tied to the Harvard case, as an example, investigators allegedly discovered some 40 human skulls organized as house decor, together with one adorned with a head scarf.
However many say a fascination with dying — and the assorted methods it’s processed throughout historical past and cultures — has lengthy permeated a sure subset of the eccentricities group.
Throughout a current tour of his Warner, N.H., house, Chris Martiello guided a pair of tourists by an intensive private assortment that features a mummified fetal pig, a pair of taxidermy bats, and numerous Peruvian funerary dolls, which he mentioned are made utilizing the clothes that an individual wore once they died. Martiello, who works as a nurse and have become fascinated about oddities years in the past, likened the seek for uncommon gadgets to a sort of glorified scavenger hunt by historical past.
“[It’s] curiosity, plain and easy,” mentioned Martiello, who additionally owns what he describes as a tanned piece of human pores and skin with a preserved tattoo. “You’re surrounded all day by mundanity. Having these things exhibits me that there’s a bigger world on the market.”
It’s a world, collectors readily acknowledge, that isn’t for everybody.
“My dad thinks I’m loopy,” says Kelsie Bowden, 17, a novice collector from Rhode Island whose assortment of things features a small jarred shark specimen she’s dubbed “Clarence.” (Her father, she says, does discover humor in a single piece in her assortment: a racoon penis bone.)
Public confusion over the legal guidelines governing the shopping for and promoting of sure gadgets may create problems; whereas all sellers and collectors who spoke with the Globe insist they go to nice lengths to make sure they adhere to all legal guidelines, Letourneau says police have visited her previously after receiving unfounded complaints from members of the general public.
How typically the dealing by some on this group truly ventures into the unlawful is tough to find out.
In Massachusetts, no centralized authorities entity retains observe of many offenses on a granular sufficient degree to know the way typically Chapter 272, Part 72 — “Shopping for, promoting or possessing useless our bodies” — has been charged.
And a survey of district lawyer’s places of work throughout the state turned up solely a few related instances. The closest matches got here from somebody in Worcester County who dug up a physique for a spiritual ritual and a South Shore man accused almost a decade in the past of protecting useless our bodies in a storage unit.
However even earlier than the Harvard scandal spilled into the nationwide information, some have been pushing for measures to make dealing in human stays harder.
Although there’s at the moment a patchwork of state legal guidelines aimed toward addressing the dealing with of donated our bodies — stealing our bodies, be it from a morgue or a grave, is at all times unlawful — the Massachusetts Funeral Administrators Affiliation is hoping to get federal laws handed that might regulate what the group sees as a grey market of “physique brokers” extra tightly.
“Few guidelines imply few penalties when our bodies are mistreated,” reads the group’s truth sheet on the proposed Consensual Donation and Analysis Integrity Act of 2023.
With out query, the current information out of Harvard has resulted in a circling of the wagons. A number of oddities purveyors throughout New England declined to remark for this story or didn’t reply to messages from the Globe. And within the numerous oddities outlets of Salem, the current allegations hung as heavy because the haze of incense smoke, with questions on human stays eliciting responses starting from amusement to trepidation.
“[With] these things with Harvard, I might suspect it’s going to tighten up actual good,” mentioned Mark Winzeler, who owns Union Home Oddities in Contoocook, N.H.
On the similar time, the group’s current foray into the general public eye doesn’t seem to have dampened the collective spirit.
One Salem oddities store employee who declined to offer his identify as a result of he didn’t have permission to talk whereas at work mentioned that whereas he doesn’t personally personal any human stays, he would love to amass a human cranium if he might discover one thing each authorized and inexpensive.
“It might be superior,” he mentioned, his smile bisected by a labret lip ring. “It’s one thing primal about our human nature that we simply don’t expertise a lot.”
Till then, he’s left to make due with a group that features a baboon cranium that works properly as a Yorick stand-in for Hamlet monologues, in addition to a clump of hair that purportedly as soon as adorned the pinnacle of the cult chief Charles Manson.
His pal down the counter chimed in: “Interested by dying — some individuals flip it off, however some individuals can’t flip it off, so they give the impression of being to normalize it.”