Arkansas – A former mortuary worker in Arkansas, Candace Chapman Scott, pleaded not guilty to 12 counts related to selling stolen body parts from medical school cadavers to a man in Pennsylvania for nearly $11,000.
The federal indictment was unsealed on Friday, accusing Scott of arranging the transactions through a Facebook group about “oddities.”
She allegedly approached the buyer, identified as Jeremy Lee Pauley, in October 2021 and offered remains from the medical school that her workplace was supposed to cremate and return.
The indictment alleges that over nine months, Scott sold Pauley fetuses, brains, hearts, lungs, genitalia, large pieces of skin, and other body parts. Scott was employed at Arkansas Central Mortuary Services, where part of her job was to transport, cremate, and embalm remains.
The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock has said that’s where the medical school sent remains of cadavers that had been donated for medical students to examine.
During one conversation, according to the indictment, Scott sold the remains of an unborn child for a low price, writing to Pauley on Facebook, “he’s not in great shape.”
“This is one of the most bizarre investigations I have encountered in my thirty-three years as a prosecutor,” Cumberland County District Attorney Seán M. McCormack said last year. “Just when I think I have seen it all, a case like this comes around.”
Pennsylvania officials discovered the scheme after receiving complaints about Pauley last year. Scott is currently jailed, and a hearing on whether she will be released on bail is scheduled for Tuesday.
Pauley is also facing charges in his own case.
