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It took three years before Stauffer found out how his mother’s remains were actually used.

A 2016 Reuters investigation revealed that the BRC cremated one of Doris’ hands to send back to Jim. They then sold her body for $5,893 to the military for blast testing — without her son’s knowledge.

According to Stauffer, his mother was “supposedly strapped in a chair on some sort of apparatus, and a detonation took place underneath her to basically kind of get an idea of what the human body goes through when a vehicle is hit by an IED.”

“I feel foolish,” Stauffer said. “Because I’m not a trusting person, but in this situation you have no idea this is going on — you trust. I think that trust is what they fed on.”

Photo by Reuters

Stauffer isn’t alone. He, along with 32 other plaintiffs, is suing BRC for alleged deception. The matter is set to go to trial on October 21. Business Insider reported that Stephen Gore, former owner and operator of BRC, has pleaded guilty to one count of illegal control of an enterprise and has been sentenced to four years probation. According to CNN, other defendants include a former operator of a BRC in Illinois, the assistant medical director of the same site, and two companies that did business with the centre.

The U.S. army says it was unaware of the deception and had not seen the consent forms.

A 2014 FBI raid on a BRC facility in Arizona revealed a grisly sight: human body parts kept in buckets, a cooler filled with male genitalia, infected heads, and a woman’s head sewn to a male’s torso. Mark Cwynar, special FBI agent, described what he saw as a ‘morbid joke’ during eyewitness testimony, according to KTVK radio.