An Arkansas woman has pleaded not guilty to selling 20 boxes of cadaver parts stolen from medical schools to a Pennsylvania man for about $11,000.
The April 5 indictment, unsealed Friday in federal court in Little Rock, accuses Candace Chapman Scott, 36, a former funeral home worker, of arranging the transactions with a man she met in a Facebook group about "oddities." .
Scott, a Little Rock resident, pleaded not guilty to 12 counts including conspiracy to commit mail fraud, mail fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to transport stolen property between states and transport stolen property between state.
Scott is incarcerated and will have a hearing on Tuesday to determine if she will be released on bail. An attorney for Scott did not immediately respond to an email sent Saturday seeking comment.
The buyer is not named in the federal indictment, but separate Pennsylvania state charges identify him as Jeremy Lee Pauley of Enola, Pennsylvania.
Scott was employed by Central Arkansas Funeral Services, where part of her job was to transport, cremate and embalm remains. The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock said she sent donated cadaveric remains there for students to examine.
According to the indictment, Scott approached Pauley in October 2021 and began offering to sell remains from the medical school that the funeral home was to cremate and deliver.
"Out of curiosity, would you know of anyone interested in purchasing a whole intact embalmed brain?" was the first message Scott wrote to Pauley on Facebook, according to the indictment.
The indictment alleges that over the next nine months, Scott sold Pauley fetuses, brains, hearts, lungs, genitalia, large chunks of skin and other body parts. The indictment details that at one point Scott sold the remains of a fetus at a discount and wrote "not in excellent condition."
