Gwenhwyfar Frazier
You really can find just about anything on Facebook, these days.
Just ask Jeremy Pauley. The 40-year-old resident of Enola, Pennsylvania, was recently arrested after using Facebook messenger to purchase $4,000 worth of human body parts. Pauley was charged with felony receiving stolen property, misdemeanor receiving stolen property, and misdemeanor abuse of a corpse. He was released on $50,000 bail and is due to appear in court on September 14th.
You knew there was a cringeworthy “skeletons in his closet” joke coming at some point, but the truth is that Pauley was found to have three complete human skeletons and up to 20 human skulls stored in his home. The skeletons, it turns out, appear to have been lawfully purchased. In any case, they pale in comparison to the “three 5-gallon buckets containing various” pilfered human internal organs that police recovered upon searching his house. The haul included hearts, brains, liver, skin, and lungs; Pauley had, apparently, stashed them in his basement.
Cumberland County District Attorney Seán McCormack described this case as “one of the most bizarre” he’s encountered in his life — and McCormack has served as a prosecutor for 33 years. Speaking to the press, McCormack reflected, “Just when I think I have seen it all, a case like this comes around.”
Pauley—who self-identifies as an “oddities collector”—had, up until the time of his arrest, been purchasing body parts from a person named Candace Scott, via Facebook. Allegedly, Scott has been stealing the parts from a mortuary owned by the University of Arkansas. Pauley was then re-selling the contraband organs for a marked-up price. You can practically smell the bad mojo (among other things) from here.