Cadavers

A former mortuary worker convicted of carving up and selling cadavers donated to UCLA's medical school was sentenced to 10 years in prison Thursday and ordered to pay more than $1.7 million in fines, restitution and unpaid taxes. Jurors had found Ernest Nelson, 51, guilty after a trial that detailed how he and Henry Reid, the former director of UCLA's Willed Body Program, conspired to sell body parts from donated cadavers to enrich themselves. "This is one of those cases so outrageous it doesn't come along very often," Superior Court Judge Curtis Rappe said.

A former director of UCLA's program for bodies donated to research pleaded guilty Friday to his role in a scheme to traffic body parts for profit, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office said. Henry Reid, 58, admitted to conspiring to steal body parts worth more than a million dollars from 1999 to 2004 and handing them over to "body broker" Ernest Nelson, who in turn sold the parts to medical and pharmaceutical research companies. Reid and Nelson were indicted by a grand jury in May.

A doctor pleaded guilty to stealing a hand from a cadaver at the University of Medicine and Dentistry in Newark. The hand was later found by police at the home of a stripper. Under a plea agreement, Ahmed Rashed, 26, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of third-degree theft, said Middlesex County Assistant Prosecutor Judson Hamlin. Hamlin said he would recommend probation at a sentencing hearing March 1. Rashed is currently in his third year of residency at Martin Luther King Jr.

A court commissioner reduced bail Thursday for the former director of UCLA's willed-body program, who is accused of illegally trafficking in body parts donated for research. A hearing is set for Monday to determine whether Henry G. Reid, 57, can come up with $500,000 from legitimate sources to secure his release. Reid was arrested March 7 along with Ernest Nelson, 47. Prosecutors allege that Reid sold body parts to Nelson, who then resold them to medical research companies.

One of the alleged participants in a cadaver-trafficking scheme at UCLA's medical school has agreed to plead guilty to filing a false federal tax return and admitted to concealing $54,400 in income. The plea agreement announced by authorities Tuesday resolves the federal tax case against Henry Reid, an embalmer from Anaheim who directed UCLA's "willed-body" program from 1997 to 2004. But Reid still faces state criminal charges of conspiracy and grand theft.

Rather than go to trial, the University of California and a contractor have agreed to pay $630,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging that UC Irvine illicitly sold a spine from a donated cadaver and lost the rest of the remains. The case, which was scheduled for trial next week, would have been the first to go before a jury in the well-publicized failure of UCI's Willed Body Program in the late 1990s.

The first time I saw a dead body I was groping around in the dark in 125 feet of water looking for a drowning victim. A few members of my diving club had volunteered to help the grieving family find her: Collectively, we had enough brashness coupled with the insouciance of ignorance to go looking for this poor soul after the sheriff's divers said it was too dangerous at that depth. That's testosterone at work for you. We fanned out across the muddy bottom, holding onto a guide rope.

The former head of UCLA's cadaver program and a businessman were indicted Friday on eight felony counts involving black market sales of donated human body parts in a scheme that allegedly cheated the university out of more than $1 million. Henry Reid, the former director of UCLA's willed body program, allegedly sold body parts to businessman Ernest Nelson, who then resold them to medical, pharmaceutical and hospital research companies. "As a result, Ernest Nelson was able to supply over 20 of his clients with hundreds of body parts and received over $1 million for the supplied body parts," according to the indictment.

University of California medical schools would be required to implant barcodes or radio-frequency identifiers in cadavers, university officials said Wednesday as they announced a plan aimed at ending repeated scandals involving bodies donated to science. With reforms in place, officials said, they plan to ask a judge in March to reopen the body donor program at UCLA medical school, a year after it was temporarily closed.

Several University of California medical schools used the same lax practices that left UCLA vulnerable to the theft of cadavers, according to a report aimed at preventing more scandals involving bodies donated to science. The state's five willed-body programs, which take in a total of about 870 cadavers each year, were generally run by employees who worked with little oversight and insufficient controls, the report showed.