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Swindled

S6 Ep84: The Body Broker (Megan Hess)

Swindled

Swindled

Society & Culture, Documentary, History, True Crime

4.610.3K Ratings

🗓️ 9 August 2022

⏱️ 64 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A funeral director in a small town in Colorado is accused of selling human body parts. 

Prelude: A raid on Arthur Rathburn's body brokering business in Detroit leads to arrests in Phoenix and Chicago.

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Transcript

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1:01.0

This episode of Swindled may contain graphic descriptions or audio recordings of disturbing events which may not be suitable for all audiences.

1:10.0

Listener discretion is advised.

1:14.0

It may not be the kind of story that will bring holiday cheer.

1:17.0

But today hundreds of families probably had no idea. Their loved ones and their bodies were cut up, sold and yes even rented out of this shabby warehouse in Detroit.

1:27.0

In February 2012, cargo handlers at Detroit Metro Airport made a gruesome discovery.

1:35.0

Garbage bags containing eight freshly severed human heads were found inside blood filled to ice coolers, leaking onto the floor of a delta plane.

1:44.0

According to the paperwork, the cargo was legitimate.

1:47.0

The heads were returning from some kind of medical symposium in Israel back to their owner, a man named Arthur Rathburn, a body broker in Detroit who rented and sold human corpses and body parts to whoever needed one.

2:00.0

Usually medical schools, law enforcement agencies and universities.

...

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