Tresa Baldas

Detroit Free Press

DETROIT — For decades, Grosse Pointe Park businessman Arthur Rathburn lived a comfortable life as an esteemed anatomy expert: He received patents for cadaver station designs, published a reputable journal on embalming, lectured nationally and coordinated the University of Michigan's anatomical donation program.

But on Tuesday, on the front steps of the federal courthouse in downtown Detroit, the onetime prominent cadaver expert emerged as a vastly different man.

Rathburn — who is accused of dismembering human cadavers with chainsaws and selling infected body parts to medical researchers — stood along Lafayette Avenue wearing bright orange Croc-like shoes, navy blue sweatpants and a navy sweatshirt, which were provided to him by U.S. marshals. He had just been released on bond and was waiting for a ride to drive him to a Detroit halfway house, where a judge has ordered him to reside pending the outcome of his case.

Rathburn appeared in good spirits as he stood in the frigid cold with no coat but was hesitant to talk, given that federal agents were nearby. When asked how he's been getting by — he had been living out of his van in recent months — Rathburn shrugged and said, "It hasn't been easy."

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Rathburn declined to get into specifics of his case, noting his lawyer advised him not to talk. But he did express some frustration with the government, claiming he's been a "ping pong" in a bigger investigation, though he declined to elaborate.

"I'm doing alright," he said. "Or at least I'm trying to."

An SUV pulled up and the bearded, heavy-set Rathburn got inside.

Unless he cuts a deal with the government, what awaits Rathburn is a trial full of grisly exhibits and allegations that he committed many crimes, like cutting up bodies with chainsaws; shipping blood-filled coolers of fresh heads on commercial airliners, falsely claiming the blood was Listerine; and storing more than 1,000 body parts on ice at a rundown warehouse in Detroit.

Rathburn's estranged wife, Elizabeth Rathburn, also is charged in the case and was released on bond last week. The couple, who are going through a divorce, are under a court order not to have any contact with each other. Both also had to surrender their passports to the authorities.

Though Rathburn's name first surfaced a decade ago in a book called Body Brokers, he did not fall under the FBI's radar until years later, when federal agents started tracking what appeared to be bizarre shipments arriving for Rathburn at Detroit Metro Airport, including a bucket full of human heads that arrived from Israel one year.

The FBI raided his warehouse in December 2013 and discovered more than 1,000 body parts on ice. Another two years would go by, with similar raids occurring in Arizona and Illinois, before Rathburn would be indicted.

On Friday, the indictment was unsealed, charging Rathburn with running a national operation in which he bought infected body parts from cadaver dealers in Illinois and Arizona, then rented them out for thousands of dollars to a wide variety of researchers, including anesthesiologists and periodontists.

Among the examples outlined in the indictment was a 2011 transaction in which the Rathburns rented a head and neck to researchers for $13,108 to be used in a course titled "Advances in Periodontology" at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Cambridge, Mass. The head and neck came from an individual who tested positive for Hepatitis B, though the Rathburns hid that. ​

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He faces wire fraud, aiding and abetting, and making false statements charges. If convicted, he could face up to 20 years in prison.

While it is not illegal to sell body parts or tissue, the FBI investigation has centered on three crimes:

• Bodies being dismembered without the donors' consent and sold for profit, deceiving donors and their families who were promised they would not be sold — just used for medical research.

• Bodies going to science without the clear consent of the donors.

• Body donation centers selling body parts riddled with disease to unsuspecting medical researchers.