Shipment of 60 Human Heads Seized at Arkansas Airport

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A shipment of dozens of human heads was intercepted last week at an Arkansas airport after a Southwest Airlines worker flagged three "rubber tote containers" holding the human remains. According to the Little Rock Police Department report, the containers were brought last Wednesday night to a Southwest cargo office by Alan Woods, a 25-year-old deliveryman. Since "the containers were not marked" as to what was" inside, Southwest employee Randy Stroud, 51, advised Woods that Federal Aviation Administration and Transportation Security Administration regulations covering biohazard material required him to "see what was in the containers." Upon inspection of the first container, Stroud discovered "a large red Bio Hazard bag...with several items wrapped in large absorbent pads." When Stroud realized the items were human heads, he called airport police. The human remains were bound for the Fort Worth, Texas office of Medtronics, a medical research firm. The heads were later turned over by cops to the Pulaski County Coroner's Office, which is now examining the shipment of the remains, which were picked up by Woods at a private home in Conway. The coroner is investigating the source of the heads.

According to further reports, the 40 to 60 heads were supplied by JLS Consulting of Wynne, Ark. The company's business license was also revoked last December. Janice Hepler, JLS' founder, tells the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette her company sets up laboratory classrooms for medical courses sponsored by hospitals and other companies. That often entails obtaining and preparing cadavers from organizations that accept donated bodies and make them available for educational purposes. She said she routinely ships human specimens by air freight. Airlines require the packages to be labeled “anatomical material." In this case, she said, the private courier she hired did not label the heads correctly. Investigators, on the other hand, are truly for science and not bought or sold via the black market for human body parts.

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