The family of a British traveller who died in Mexico were horrified to learn that her eyes, brain and other organs had been stolen.

Amanda Gill died in a hospital in Mexico City and underwent a post mortem before her body was transported back to the UK.

But when pathologists in Britain went to carry out their own examination they were stunned to find that the 41-year-old had been stripped of all but one of her organs.

Amanda Gill’s mother Elaine Hines was horrified to discover her daughter’s organs were missing (Picture: Sunday Mirror/Darren O’Brien)

‘She came home empty. They stole everything inside her,’ her mother Elaine Hines, from Shipley, West Yorkshire, said.


The 65-year-old told the Sunday Mirror: ‘It was a shock for all of us. It was an awful, awful thing.



‘Everything had gone from inside her apart from her small bowel. There was nothing they could do a post mortem on as there was nothing in there.’

Ms Gill’s family now fear that her organs could have been stolen – or even worse, that she was killed deliberately for them.

‘Where are my sister’s beautiful blue eyes? Why were they taken from her?’ her sister Katie Miller-Gill said.

Colston Hall renamed Bristol Beacon to shake off association with slave trader

‘Where is her brain, her heart? I don’t know if she was killed for her organs. I cannot think of that, it is too painful.

‘Did they do it on purpose? I just hope not, I couldn’t bear to think of someone so cruel who could do that.’

Ms Gill, who was diabetic, had been travelling in Mexico City with friends when she began vomiting and was admitted to the Hospital de Cos.

She then slipped into a coma and later died with little warning.

‘At the end she was in a coma and wasn’t responding and then she just went, gone,’ Mrs Miller-Gill continued.

‘It doesn’t make any sense. It rings so many alarm bells. I don’t know why they didn’t take her blood sugar levels and put her on a drip which is the first thing you do to a diabetic going into hospital.

‘The pathologist said they could have saved her. It stinks to high heaven.’

Ms Gill’s family believe that she may have fallen ill with ketoacidosis, a diabetic complication that is remedied by taking in fluids and an IV drip – but she died within 12 hours.

Mexican authorities have stated that her cause of death was ‘visceral congestion’, which British pathologists called ‘vague’ and ‘unclear’.

Amanda died at Hospital de Cos, Mexico City (Picture: Google)

The hospital remains adamant that all the backpackers organs were in her body before she was transferred to a police station for a post mortem.

Traditionally, only tissue samples are taken during a post mortem – not whole organs.

‘When she died, the British embassy was called,’ said Angeles Nava, admin manager at Hospital de Cos.

“They called the police, the police came for the body. They took approximately three hours to collect the body.

‘They took everything else she had, too, her clothes and her phone. Notice was given to the public prosecutor. She still had all of her organs when she left here.



‘Her body was sealed in a bag and kept in a refrigerated room. It would have been illegal for us to take them unless she had signed, or the family had given permission.

‘We are an accident and emergency hospital, not a transplant hospital.’

An investigation has been launched into what happened after Ms Gill died – but her family have been unable to determine her true cause of death as a result.

Pathologist Dr Lisa Barker said: ‘I don’t know the practice in Mexico, but the cause of death is so vague and not acceptable in this country.

Government fails to answer if casual sex is illegal under new coronavirus rules

‘My only hope of finding the cause was looking at their notes and trying to work out what they meant.’

Ms Hines described the ordeal of finding out what happened as ‘heartbreaking’ and the ‘most horrendous thing that could happen’.

‘If they had said to us can we donate her organs then we might have considered it. But to steal them?’ Mrs Miller-Gill said.

‘It feels like her death hasn’t been dignified, it’s like she hasn’t had a peaceful passing.

‘Did they steal all her organs because she was English and so they thought they would get away with it as it wouldn’t be followed up?

‘Did they do it to her because she was foreign? Did they steal her organs for the illegal trade? We just don’t know.

‘We haven’t got the answers we wanted.’

Assistant Deputy Coroner Oliver Longstaff said that he believed it was likely Ms Gill died of natural causes but acknowledged the ‘number of unanswered questions’.


‘One’s heart can only go out to you being left without a complete picture and incomplete information,’ he said at an inquest with the family.

‘Whether more can be done I don’t know, because an unanswered question of this nature must be so hard to bear. It is a great regret this court cannot provide you with what you came to get.’

Got a story for Metro.co.uk? Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk. For more stories like this, check our news page.