This chronicle could end up being the script of a horror film. In fact, several centuries ago there were stories of corpse thieves sneaking into cemeteries to desecrate graves of freshly buried bodies. But this time the plot is very real: the National Police announced yesterday the dismantling in Valencia of a criminal organization that allegedly stole corpses of vulnerable people who did not have relatives or close friends in hospitals and residences to sell them to faculties of medicine
The prices for each body varied, but the four detainees, managers and workers at the Montesinos funeral home in Valencia, could pocket up to 1,200 euros per corpse. And not only that. The network had another second route of clandestine financing from the collection to those same faculties of Medicine of the incineration of the human remains already used that were returned to them, and which were not carried out.
The suspects took advantage of the dissection and dismemberment of the bodies used in the forensic anatomy classes to insert them into the coffins of other deceased from families that had hired cremation services.
Sources from the investigation confirmed yesterday that the Montesinos company, located in the Benimaclet neighborhood, invoiced the University of Valencia 5,040 euros for twelve incinerations. However, these dozen cremations were not reflected in the invoices issued by any of the incinerators operating in the city.
The protagonists of this evil plot are four men between the ages of 41 and 74. This is the owner and manager of the funeral home and two workers. All of Spanish nationality and some of them with previous records. All four were released on bail. Just yesterday La Vanguardia contacted the funeral home and its manager flatly denied being behind the plot now uncovered by the National Police. “In 2022 we fired two workers who were arrested for a case also related to a deceased person, but that case was filed,” they assured in a telephone conversation.
The investigation began in January of last year after a complaint to the National Police station in Russafa, a neighborhood of the Valencian capital. The inhabitants of a nearby town alerted because the funeral had not been held for a neighbor who had died in a residence, who had no resources, but for whom the Consistory had paid for the ceremony. The agents followed the lead and confirmed that the corpse had been removed from the mortuary of a hospital in Valencia in an irregular manner by a funeral home. To take him away, they allegedly falsified the hospital’s record book and the documentation of the deceased provided to the Civil Registry. That body did not receive a burial, as was planned and thus had been paid by the Consistory to the funeral home, but was sold to a Faculty of Medicine for the study work of the students.
Almost in parallel, investigators discovered another case with matching elements, such as the funeral home under suspicion. At that time, the man had been admitted to a geriatric home suffering from an illness that prevented him from being aware of his actions.
Three days before he died, the man allegedly authorized the donation of his body for science. The Police found that at that time the old man’s mental abilities were greatly affected, as he suffered from a serious cognitive impairment that prevented him from understanding what the donation entailed. As if that wasn’t enough, the donation specified that the body was to be transferred to a certain Faculty of Medicine, although it was finally transferred to another which, according to the note released by the National Police, paid more for bodies for his study than the previous one. This change of destination of the body got it signed by health personnel.
The investigated network found dead people who had no relatives, preferably foreigners or in a vulnerable situation. In this way, they ensured that no follow-up was done on these donations by any family member. Once the universities had finished their studies with the bodies, they had to pay for the cremations, and the funeral home itself took care of it.
The surprise was to find that the funeral home had billed 5,040 euros for twelve cremations that it had not carried out. What they did was collect the corpses and put their remains in the coffins of other dead people.
The information yesterday caused great consternation in the Valencian university sector. In Valencia there are three faculties of Medicine: the public one of the University of Valencia, UV; that of the Catholic University and that of the CEU Cardinal Herrera University. Yesterday, after the investigation was made public, the three centers denied any involvement in the plot or having participated in the purchase of bodies for study.
The UV issued a statement in which it affirmed that it works with “safe” protocols to accept corpses. The public institution emphasized that they do not buy cadavers, but rather accept live donations after meeting “rigorous” requirements. The faculty receives the donation of between 40 and 50 bodies a year and only pays the cost of transporting the body to the faculty. The institution said it guarantees body donors and their families “that they will be treated with dignity, respect and anonymity at all times.”
The researchers are focusing on the practices carried out by medical students of the CEU Cardenal Herrera University at its facilities in Alfara del Patriarca and Castelló. The researchers detected irregularities in the processing of the donation of one of the bodies that had just arrived at the faculty’s premises.
In a statement, the university also denied any commercialization of bodies, and asserts that it collaborated with the Police when they were aware that one of the bodies had arrived with falsified documentation and that, in fact, they returned it, untouched, at the funeral home
It has not been made public that the investigators included in the plot any head of the faculties of Medicine, which suggests that the universities paid, but not in terms of the body, but for the costs of the transfer and subsequent cremation of the remains that they were coming back
