2 Women Steal Fetus From Exhibit

The women appeared to wait for the crowd to thin at the round-the-clock exhibit before one reached into a plexiglass case and took the 4-inch specimen just before 3 a.m. Saturday, police said.

The theft was the first ever for "Body Worlds: The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies," which has been viewed by more than 60 million people over nine years in Europe, Asia and the United States.

More than 900,000 people have visited the exhibit at the Exposition Park museum. "Body World" was in the middle of a 62-hour nonstop run from Friday morning to midnight Sunday to mark its end. Police and science center officials said a grainy video shows two women appearing to wait for people to leave the area and then prying open the case.

One of the women, described as 18 to 25 years old with dark clothes and dark hair pinned up, appeared to place the specimen in a satchel or her pants pocket, said Los Angeles Police Det. Willem Erkelens.

The other woman appeared to be 25 to 35 with bright blond hair and was wearing a red scarf, striped sweater and long red skirt, Erkelens said. After the theft, the women casually looked at another display, the preserved body of a woman who was five months pregnant.

Police don't know the motive for the theft. Police, museum and exhibit officials said they had received no threats regarding the reproduction exhibits.

Erkelens declined to offer details about the theft, but said the women didn't appear to have tools.

The displays were created by German scientist Gunther von Hagens, who used a process in which specimens are dried and body fluids are replaced with plastics.

Some of the partial specimens were purchased from collections, but the whole bodies were donated specifically for display.

The stolen fetus came from an early 20th century anatomical collection.

The exhibit includes 200 bodies and body parts, skinned and dissected, laid open to show bones, muscles and nerves. Some of the bodies are in lifelike poses, including the body of a man shown playing chess with his brain exposed.

One work is titled "Suicide by Fat--Obesity Revealed" and another is "Orthopedic Man," which shows various surgically implanted devices.