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January 21, 2026 38 mins

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On today’s MKD, we talk about Johnny Knoxville's stunt limitations following a brain injury, a pastry chef killed by a dough mixer, a man convicted of trafficking human remains who spoke out about the PA grave robbing case, how much body parts are worth, and how donated bodies can become Halloween decor. 

🎟️ 2/21 - City Winery NYC

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Mother Knows Death starring Nicole and Jemmy and Maria qk.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hi.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
Everyone welcome The Mother Knows Death. On today's episode, we're
going to talk about Johnny Knoxville in the latest Jackass
movie and why he has to take special precautions because
of previous brain injuries, a freak accident involving a man
who died in an industrial dough mixer. Then we'll finish
up the episode talking about the case we brought you

(00:41):
last week about Jonathan Gerlock and the hundreds of bodies
and body parts that he had robbed from Graves, and
we'll get into a discussion about the human body broker industry.
All that and more on today's episode. Well, I'm excited
that there's a new Jackass movie coming out. I always
like I kind of like it. Honestly, I love Jackass.

(01:04):
I just can't.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
I mean whatever, I'm going to sound ageous. They're old,
so I'm surprised to keep making them. But there's a
new one coming out this summer, and Johnny Knoxviell's saying
his stunts are going to look a little different because
I guess when they were recording Jackass Forever, a couple
of years ago, he had such a severe brain injury
from an incident with a bull that he's not allowed
to get hit in the head anymore.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
Yeah, and I'm sure that he's had way more than
that one, but that one actually caused him to have
a brain bleed and a serious concussion that he was
hospitalized for. So we talk about this all the time
on the show, with the increased chances of getting CTE,
or chronic traumatic encephalopathy. The more times you hit your

(01:48):
head and have a concussion when you're a younger person,
the higher the chances are that you would get this CTE,
which can include changes like dementia, memory loss, and then
some of the more severe ones that we see in
cases where they become violent with agitation and just mood
disorders and things like that. So I like that he's

(02:11):
even bringing awareness to that to just be like, hey, kids,
if you're doing dumb stuff like this, this is going
to become a concern for you as you get older.
But he's done such crazy stuff that you're almost like,
is that all that he has, you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (02:27):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
I just I don't know why. I always really just
like that show. I think it's funny.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
The best one they ever did, I think it's in
Jackass too, is when Chris Ponds flies out of the
ground in a double costume. It's like, truly the funniest
thing ever. I can't believe these guys don't have more
issues from all the shit they do. I mean, you
just you you were literally watching them do these horrific

(02:55):
things and they just kind of laugh it off and
go about their day. But I can't believe they don't
have more severe injuries along these lines unless they just
keep it under wraps. I mean, I don't feel like
I heard about this at the time, but I also
wasn't paying attention to what was going on around the
time they were.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Filming that movie.

Speaker 3 (03:11):
But they remember that same are is that guy going
to be in the new movie too? I wonder like
an original cast people remember he stuck like a like
a like a toy car like up his ass. They
had like as a rectal foreign body, and I just
remember like him, I feel like he went to the

(03:31):
hospital and just was like, oh, I'm having abdominal pain,
and then they did the X ray and put it
up and the car was in his butt, but his
face was just so funny because he was clearly like
like so uncomfortable.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
You know, it just was great.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
Well, I've been seeing I've been seeing i think kind
of misleading headlines that Bam Margara was going to be
part of it. But what I read is that he
just signed documentation that they could show old footage of him,
but he's not going to be doing any news stunts.
And with this in my and with all the issues
he's having, you have to wonder, like, did all of
these stunts make him into the kind of a mess

(04:06):
he is today or was that just always happening behind
the scenes and it's just gotten really severe. I mean,
there's also just to take into consideration that going from
just being like a pretty regular, you know, middle class
person to getting that level of fame, sometimes people just
don't handle it correctly, you know.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
No, totally all right.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
A seventy one year old pastry chef was working with
an industrial dough mixer when he somehow got caught in
it and suffered such severe injuries that he died.

Speaker 3 (04:38):
Yes, so again we don't have any details about what
happened in this case. Sometimes in different kinds of machinery
that spins like that one thing is to note is
that you should never have any kind of loose clothing
on with women, especially if you have like or men,

(04:59):
if you have longer hair, it always should be tied
back because it could get wrapped up in it and
pull like pull you into the machine basically, and it
could cause like asphyxia. Even if the guy had on
a shirt and it got caught in it and just
pulled them in, it could just pull your body so
close to it. So we don't really know what happened

(05:21):
in that case. Another thing to take into consideration, because
he was older, is that maybe he had a heart
attack and kind of fell into it and then you know,
so they have OSHA, which is occupational safety organization that
will go in and check to make sure that there's

(05:42):
not something unsafe at the workplace that caused this to
happen to him, like kind of do an investigation to
see whose fault was this and why did it happen
so it doesn't happen to anyone else. I mean, he's
been working there for a very long time, right as
a pastry chef.

Speaker 1 (05:59):
Yeah, And I mean I just want to put the
picture in everybody's head too. If you just have a
small level kitchen aid or stand mixer, for example, think
about that on its highest power, how much force that has,
and then think about that in an extremely large capacity
doing much larger things. So I definitely think these things
could be very dangerous.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
And I mean I feel like.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
When we were going through the grocery room in the
last year recategorizing everything, we had a lot of industrial
accidents like this. Didn't I ever tell you about the
time that I was using one of those stupid handheld mixers.
It was before I got my kitchen.

Speaker 3 (06:34):
Aid, and I was so I was holding it like
with my left hand, and then I had this batula
and was kind of like pushing down the sides of
the batter like in.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
It while I was just making a cake mix and.

Speaker 3 (06:50):
I bumped into it and it like sucked the rubber
spatula into what are the things called, oh, the beader thing,
you know, the beader, Yeah, they're later things. It sucked
it in, and it sucked my hand in, Like, yeah,
my hand got stuck in it, and and I had
that thing was like stuck on my hand and it

(07:10):
hurt so freaking bad. And I was able to pull
my hand out. I'm surprised I didn't break my hand, honestly,
Like it was crazy to think about your hand being
stuck in one of those things. Like it was terrible
and I was like, holy shit, just because like I
was getting ready to go to a party.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
Or something and brushing and not paying attention and stuff.

Speaker 3 (07:29):
But like, I can't even imagine that on another kind
of a level, you know.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
I have this very vivid memory from my childhood. It's
like one of those weird things you remember even though
it happened twenty five years ago, where I was at
my childhood friend's house and we were like making brownies
or something, and my friend plugged in the hand mixture
while her mom was holding it, and it turned on
and her mom's hand was nowhere near it or anything.

(07:55):
It just turned on and her mom flipped out so bad.
It was like you could have just killed me. And
I was like, Okay, relax, like it was an accident
with your hand was nowhere near it, so chill out.
But yeah, those things have a lot of force behind them,
and people do need to be really careful. I feel like,
especially in the home, people aren't thinking about that.

Speaker 2 (08:17):
Like I'm not.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
Thinking about that when I'm just throwing stuff at the KitchenAid, right,
but it could happen so easy, like in your case.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
Yeah all right.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
Joe Jackaline actually made me aware of this guy during
our live stream last Friday. Encourage everybody to check out
the True Crime with the Sarge live stream from last Friday,
finding it was so much fun. He is, I love
him such a good names.

Speaker 3 (08:37):
So he called me a wacko if for any of you,
this is so great, so for any of you guys
that didn't see it or did see it, So before
we go on this live I just said to him, Hey,
I'm gonna I want to put a bunch of pictures
with some of the stuff we're talking about, just so
I could explain things. And for those of you in

(08:57):
the gross room who read our post about I think girlock,
I do this whole entire thing about, like what's what
things are for sale in America right now that are
considered to be legitimate medical skulls and are totally legal
to sell versus like the stuff this guy was selling.
And this guy so so I gave him pictures off

(09:18):
of this guy's Instagram and then I gave him a
picture of the skull that's in one of the skulls
that's in my house that looks like it came out of.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
A museum, right.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
So Maria uploads that picture of the skull from my
house and then Joe looks at it and he goes,
this guy was a real wacko. This was and I
was like, Joe, that's my house and it was so funny.
So I have I literally have not let it go
with him. Every single day. I've been messing with him
and he he's like, I feel really bad about this.

(09:49):
You're never gonna let me live this down. And I
was like, oh, absolutely not. So then yesterday I texted
him and I was like, dude, I just watched the
Karen Reid movie, which we're gonna talk about another episode
later this week, and I said, Proctor from the trial
called Karen Reed a wacko. I just I was like,

(10:11):
I just want to let you know, so like it's
it's great.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
I know Braylin was in there for sures because I
saw her at the comment section, but yeah, that was
before we went live. I I was thinking about it
the whole time we were recording and just like cracking up,
trying not to laugh, thinking about it was so great. Okay. Anyway,
so there's this guy, Jeremy Paully, So he's speaking out

(10:35):
about the Jonathan Gerlot case now because he himself had
been wrapped up in kind of a similar situation and
I had gone to prison for trafficking stolen human remains.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
So we didn't talk.

Speaker 3 (10:45):
I don't know if we We might have talked about
it a little bit in the grocery or definitely in
the grocery, might think a little bit. But also on
this show, yeah, when it all went down, because it
was attached to like if I'm reading correctly, he but
he was trying to do some procedure called plastinization, which

(11:08):
is when you take a human body or human body
parts and inject like a wax type of polymer plastic
thing inside of it so it could be preserved forever.
This would be the most thing that you guys will
find relatable, is like the Body World's exhibits where they
have these bodies on display. It's a technique that is

(11:31):
used in medicine a lot, just so people could have
access to looking at real anatomic specimens that aren't decomposing
and their anatomy is preserved.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
And things like that. So this guy, even though he's.

Speaker 3 (11:46):
Not a medical person or anything, was trying to work
on that technique and he was buying human tissue off
of someone to do that. And that person that he
was buying the human tissue off of was getting it
from donor programs for cadavers for medical schools and stuff

(12:06):
like that.

Speaker 1 (12:06):
Yeah, this was the specifics where he was getting them from.
So from twenty eighteen to twenty twenty two, this person,
Cedric Lodge, who managed the morgue for the Anatomical Gifts
Program at Harvard Medical School, stole organs and other parts
of cadavers donated for medical research and education before their
scheduled creations. And then he also got stolen human remains

(12:27):
from a woman named Candace Chapman Scott who stole remains
from her employer in Little Rock, Arkansas Mortuary and Crematorium.
So I guess why he got in trouble was the
Department of Justice website. I was reading about this case.
They were saying he knew he was stealing stolen remains

(12:48):
or buying stealing, he was buying stolen remains and that's
where he comes in guilty here.

Speaker 2 (12:53):
Well, I guess, I guess yeah.

Speaker 3 (12:58):
I mean it's the same conversation and I had about
Jonathan Garlock. It's just like there's never a reason a
person in the general population should have access to something
like that. Yes, Like you could say, like right now,
if I want to get if if I want to
practice let's say I was doing that, I want to

(13:18):
practice that technique on a deer. You can get animals right,
like easily, they're you know, just get someone to go
out and shoot one, get one that's already been shot,
someone's freeze or whatever. But like it's the same thing
we were talking about with the skulls, Like if you
have a human skull, the only reason that you should

(13:39):
have a human skull in your possession is if it
was an old medical specimen or you dug it up
out of a grave, like why would or you killed
a person, Like where would you get a human skull from? Right,
So if you don't know where it's coming from, I
guess there's a lot of And we're going to talk
about this a little bit more on this episode. There's
just like a gray area of like what is allowed
to be sold versus not. So this guy ends up

(14:02):
they get him and say he knew where he was
getting it from, which which is possible because he wasn't
questioning where it was coming from, I suppose.

Speaker 2 (14:12):
And he got sentenced to what five.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
Years in jail, He got sick, he made a plea deal,
and he got six years. And you know, now he
is speaking out about this John to think Ger law case,
and he's saying that collectors and people like Jonathan are
not the same person. This guy refers to himself as
a collector. He said, there's no shortage of legal human

(14:36):
remains on the market. There is no need to steal
an especially grave dig unless you're just trying to create
a product from nothing. But like, yeah, you were using
stolen once, so like you were of yourself. I was thinking,
like I do agree with that statement, but like.

Speaker 2 (14:52):
Not from him.

Speaker 3 (14:53):
He's going and I don't know whatever, I I don't,
I don't, I just I don't even understand. I feel
like six years and like I know that they need
to make an example of him and stuff, but like
six years is so much time compared like if pedophiles
were getting that much time, I would say, Okay, this
is an equivalent sentence, but it's just they're just totally

(15:18):
making example of this guy. It's just harsh compared to
some of the other sentences that people get, right, like
I don't know whatever.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
Of people that go to jail for like defrauding a
bank loan or something, and they get like twelve years
in prison and listen, it's obviously not right in everything,
but like.

Speaker 3 (15:39):
It's it's just not the same as like physically, like
hurting a human being, especially a child. So I don't
I don't really understand, but whatever, the legal system is
what it is. So he's going to jail for a while.
He So this is really interesting. He was trying to
delay his sentence because he has he has a very

(15:59):
unusual look and he has these implanted spikes in his
head that he wanted to get surgically removed. So he
was trying to delay going to jail, and they were like, yeah, no.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
Why wouldn't you just want to get it over with. Yeah,
but I agree with his statement, like you're saying, and
maybe it's a self reflection. Maybe he I think he's
out now, so maybe he spend his time in jail, And.

Speaker 3 (16:21):
No, he's not out, he's getting ready to go in. Oh,
I thought he was out, okay, so because this all
this all just happened and he's just he That's what's weird,
because it's like he has to go to jail for
six years, but like it wasn't bad enough that he's
out free right now and he has to go report
Like it's just it's just bizarre. I don't want it
just seems like so much time to be out of

(16:45):
the population when when you're not considered to be a
harm to other people. I mean, what he did was
was was terrible, right and upsetting for families involved in
everything like that, and it has wider implications because then
people are going to be less inclined to donate their

(17:05):
body to science if they think that something like this
is going to go on behind the scenes.

Speaker 2 (17:11):
But I he he wasn't.

Speaker 3 (17:13):
Even the ring master, Like there's there's people way above
him in this, so it was like a whole thing.
I too don't understand that.

Speaker 1 (17:20):
Like I was always under the assumption that when you
were sentenced, you just went right there and started. But
then I've been hearing with other cases of people getting
like duys and stuff that they could just turn themselves
in and they have to be turned in by a
specific date, So like, why are you allowed to get
your affairs in order during that time? Like you should
have it. You don't always get setenced immediately upon your conviction, So.

Speaker 3 (17:45):
Yeah, I would, and I would just be like, I
want to get this over with like that.

Speaker 2 (17:49):
Why wait?

Speaker 1 (17:50):
Yeah exactly.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
It doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 3 (17:53):
But so I guess one thing I am confused though,
is that so he just did this first interview. He
has some kind of an oddity store in Pennsylvania somewhere
near Scranton. Like he's still allowed to have that store
and sell stuff when.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
This happened.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
That's what I'm a little confused about.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
I don't know about you, but I feel like this case,
well maybe these two going back to back, are really
gonna start changing laws at least in Pennsylvania about these sales,
because like, these are two major problems and God knows
what goes on that we don't even know about. Yeah,
I mean it, it's just like it is, but it's

(18:37):
you know how long things take. Yeah, totally.

Speaker 3 (18:40):
And I think that just the impending like this is
gonna happen, it's just gonna make it worse for a
while because people just be like let's get this done
before there's actually laws about it.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
Right.

Speaker 3 (18:49):
God, I'm into like a skull buy back program.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
This episode is brought to you by the Gross Room.

Speaker 3 (19:07):
So last week's high profile death dis section was on
Jonathan Gurlock, and we go through that whole entire case,
talking a little bit more, but also showing pictures of
different things, and going through all the laws, what's legal,
what's not legal, and what that looks like. This week,
of course, I told you we did one on Hannah
Petty and her particular case we talked about in the

(19:29):
Gross Room last week about her husband poisoning her with
lead capsules that he was giving her just saying, hey, Han,
take these vitamins. So we go all about what that
does to the human body, how they're able to identify
that at the hospital, because obviously people don't get lead
poisoning often, so it's not on the first the first

(19:52):
thing on a doctor's mind to diagnose somebody with that.
So we go through all the different lab tests and
what they look forward to get to that point, and
imaging as well, and then we have a really good
case of a woman who was married who really wanted
to get rid of her husband's name that was tattooed
on her in a very unusual way. So all that

(20:13):
and more in the Grossroom.

Speaker 1 (20:15):
Head over to the grossroom dot com now to sign up.

Speaker 3 (20:18):
So this next article getting back into this body trade industry,
I'm not sure the legitimacy of this particular article because
one thing that I took a note of was how
the person that wrote the article was talking about a
case where a woman said that she recognized her son

(20:40):
as the thinker in the Body World's exhibit in Las Vegas,
or one of those body exhibits in Las Vegas. And
I had, actually I heard that. I came across that
a year or so ago, and I decided to look
into it, and I wrote a forensic Friday on it,

(21:00):
and going through that and comparing what her son looked
like and all of the things that she described, going
side by side with pictures and everything, I personally came
to the conclusion that's definitely not her son. And so
this person's writing it as fact that it is when
that's never been confirmed.

Speaker 1 (21:21):
They did put she quote recognized, but like they also
didn't make it clear like you're saying that that was
it it was.

Speaker 3 (21:28):
It was like I'm going to tell you that there's
there's a huge thing that a lot of those bodies
were coming from, like Chinese prisons and things like that,
and it just looks more consistent with something like that.
Just all of the things she said didn't match up.
So yeah, she could think it's her son, but but
it's not, so that shouldn't be written as fact like that.

Speaker 1 (21:50):
Yeah, so I guess the argument they're trying to make, well,
not argument. They're trying to explain this world of body
brokers and how valuable body parts can be. And this
is seeming to from this Jonathan Girlock case coming out.
All these people are curious all of a sudden, even
though I'm like, this case was involved in shocking to
some extent, but grave ropping. It's just not that I

(22:13):
don't think it's as rare as people are pointing it
out to be. I feel like we cover stories about
it quite often, but this one's clearly getting more recognition.
But the person writing this article is trying to go
over basically how valuable each part of your body is
said to be on in regular markets and the black market,
because apparently there's a legal way to do it, and

(22:33):
a majorly illegal way to do it.

Speaker 3 (22:36):
Yeah, so a whole human body is going from ten
to fifteen thousand dollars. Now, if you remember in the
Jonathan Girlock case, I would even say it might even
be more than that.

Speaker 1 (22:50):
Yeah, I would think so.

Speaker 3 (22:51):
But the Jonathan Girlock case, if you remember, in his
storage unit, he actually has full cod like bodies, decomposed bodies,
full skeletonized, partially skeletonized, some soft tissue attached. So I
saw at least two or three right, like, if you

(23:12):
think about them, at minimum fifteen thousand dollars a pop.
Like this is a huge money industry.

Speaker 1 (23:18):
Well yeah, and I feel like we got into this
similarly with the David Scans case. If you head over
in the grocerim and read the Lamb Funeral Home dissection,
because in that case they had formed this false nonprofit
where they were kind of under the guise of being
a tissue bank. But what people didn't know behind the
scenes was this man was allegedly taking body parts from

(23:41):
dead people that were coming to the funeral home and
supposed to be getting cremated or just burials, taking their
eyeballs and then in these cases they'll sell them to
schools or companies that will test for implants or surgical tools.
They even say they could be sold to medical or
military research. So in these cases, these people are illegally
taped making these parts off of the bodies and then

(24:02):
making profits off of selling their parts and trying to
act like it's legal, but technically it's all illegal. So
it's just weird to me because I think about a
medical like a company that's trying to test medical devices
for example, why why don't they have to trace where
it's coming from unless they were providing to take paperwork.

(24:24):
So we were We talked about this in another case
in the grocerroom recently too, when we were talking about
that random embombed head that was found in the woods
in Pennsylvania back in the early two thousands. And we
really get into the whole body trade industry in that
post too, because we're saying, like, Okay, there was this

(24:45):
embombed head found in the woods, how did it get there?
It had to be from.

Speaker 3 (24:49):
One of these cases, because who would sit there and
embomb a person like that? Like that's somebody's head that
had already been embombed.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
So that is the case I was thinking of when
Joe asked me, what cold case do you want to
and I was like, we just wrote about one, and
I was having major pregnancy brain. I'm like, I have
no idea, but I know we just wrote about one,
and I was picturing it in my head and I'm like,
I can't articulate what this is. That was the one.

Speaker 3 (25:21):
I was thinking, Yeah, and that would be that would
be a really good one to get solved. But I mean,
they're just there's never a situation where there should be
an embalmed head there. But then you're like, Okay, there's
way more to this story, like where did it come from?

Speaker 1 (25:35):
It?

Speaker 3 (25:36):
Did it come from one of these things where there's
because there was all this talk about this guy that
might have been involved that he was saying he was
digging through the trash to get body parts to do
this very similar thing. So you know, it just was
We have like a big discussion on it though in
this particular post about what is it.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
The case of the embombed head?

Speaker 1 (25:58):
Yeah, this this severed and Bob ten in the woods.
But let's get into some of these prices. The prices
in this article we're in a foreign currency, but I
put them into US dollars just because most of our
listeners are in the US. So all right, Torso said
it could go from three thousand, one hundred and seventy
five dollars a liver for six hundred dollars, ahead for
five hundred dollars. All right, Pause, Why would a liver

(26:21):
be more valuable than a whole head?

Speaker 2 (26:23):
This is dumb, all right? But ahead would be ahead
would be so.

Speaker 3 (26:27):
Much money because just the skull is going to be hundreds,
if not thousands of dollars.

Speaker 2 (26:33):
So like, why would the head be cheaper? Or is
it like when you.

Speaker 3 (26:37):
Go when you go to the grocery store and they're like, okay,
you could have this meat that costs this price. But
if we had processed it and chopped it up into
fine pieces for like a stir fry, it costs more
because we we actually had to do something to it.

Speaker 1 (26:54):
Maybe all right, foot and lower leg three fifty, spine
three hundred artery sixty five, a fingernail seven dollars. And
then we get into the black market prices, which are
corneas fifteen thousand dollars, lungs two hundred and six thousand dollars,
kidneys one hundred and five thousand dollars, liver one hundred
and six thousand dollars, heart four hundred and twenty five
thousand dollars, maybe up to a million dollars, skeleton five

(27:16):
thousand dollars, bone and ligaments three to three point five
thousand dollars, skin six dollars per square inch, and blood
two hundred and twenty five dollars per liter. I don't
know where this person is getting these prices from in
their research, but it seems all over the place.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
Well, yeah, what did they say a full body? Was like,
just get the full body and then get all the
pieces yourself. I'm telling you it's like going you know
how you could go to Costco and buy like half
of a cow. It's just way cheaper than getting the
meat wrapped up individually.

Speaker 1 (27:48):
Yeah, exactly, Like you're saying, it's because they have Is
it because they have to put the work into it
to cut it up and whatever?

Speaker 2 (27:54):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (27:54):
This just seems all over the place, but we do
know there is a black market for body part selling.
Another good example of this is a show called Kings
of Tupelo on Netflix as a documentary about Elvis impersonated
that possibly expossed an underground human trafficking or human remains
trafficking ring. Very interesting story. And then we have the

(28:18):
Land Funeral Home as just two high profile examples of this, right,
but we certainly know what happens and they are making
a lot of money off of it.

Speaker 3 (28:26):
Yeah, it's scary to just say, like, I guess another
industry that needs to be more regulated, because if you
are donating, then you would want to hope that you know,
like let's say, for example, we had cadavers. The word
donate is funny too, because our cadaver cost a lot
of money. I remember we had to split it the

(28:48):
three of us or that were in our group or whatever.

Speaker 2 (28:51):
That had to split it.

Speaker 3 (28:54):
But once like let's say, for example, we took the
guy's liver out and we caught it up, and we
were dumbed dissecting it. We put it in a specific
trash bag that stayed with that body the whole time.
So we knew that that like all that guy's remains
were buried to get would get a cut, you know,

(29:14):
they would get cremated together. So that's okay, that's like
what we did in the gross anatomy lab like that.
But I suppose that whoever is the Morga attendant at
that point that has access to those bags could just
I mean, like if you took the liver out and
gave it to somebody, how would you really know? You know, like, well,
I think that's what's happening, and like that's that's like

(29:37):
one thing, and then you have this other level of
this land funeral home where they were they were just
straight up taking everything and then handing people like cat
litter or whatever rocks in a bag and saying it
was uh. And then you have another thing with other
funeral homes that they are saying that they're cremating family

(29:59):
members and they're not, and they're just keeping the money
and giving fake like cremains to a person too, So
which is just like that's like a whole other level
of being, you know, just gross, right.

Speaker 1 (30:13):
Oh for sure. So also stemming from this is an
article about how the purchase of human remains is most
popular around Halloween, particularly in Pennsylvania, and how in Pennsylvania
they're legally allowed to become Halloween decor But like is
that true?

Speaker 2 (30:32):
Well, I mean, ark all that money, Like, I don't know,
I don't.

Speaker 1 (30:36):
Think people are I mean, I'm sure there are some people.
I don't think people are buying them with the intention
of them specifically being Halloween decor. But a person like you,
for example, that has like an old medical specimen could
in theory use it as Halloween decor. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:51):
I mean. The thing is is that like they're you know,
there are certain movies that were filmed like Gooni's for example,
they're real skeletons, all of them. Really, you're yes, one
hundred percent, like back in the day, yes, so like
even some of the rides and stuff when you're at
like like Pirates of the Caribbean and stuff like, probably

(31:12):
not now, but when the first opened, I guarantee that
it probably.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
Was like, yeah, like this is I feel like what
was one of the movies?

Speaker 3 (31:24):
Was it It's one of the Twilight Zone movies or something.
They had skelet like real skeletons. They like this is
this is not anything new to be used as like
a prop for something like that, right, And you wouldn't
have thought that was weird then, but now you're just like, Okay,
there's all these laws and stuff and it's probably frowned upon,
so we're just gonna use plastic ones that are really

(31:45):
good so people can't tell. But yeah, I mean, like
I just I just don't really know if that's true,
because I'm thinking, like, if you want to do a
Halloween display, even if you're a super rich person, you're
a freaking Kardashian, Like, are you gonna spend five thousand
dollars for real skeleton? Like come on, well it sounds
it sounds outrageous.

Speaker 1 (32:04):
I guess the argument they're trying to make is how
disrespectful it is. And like, listen, I one hundred percent
agree with that, But where do we draw the line,
particularly with Halloween, because like, what's the difference if you
have a real person on display or you have a
fake skeleton in a scene where they got in a
horrific car accident or they're cutting somebody's head off, right,
I mean, people are getting so out of control with

(32:24):
the decorations, and it's like where do we draw the line? Yeah,
it's all disrespectful if you really want to think about
it like that.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
Yeah, we talked about that a little bit at Halloween
time in the grosser room, just because some of the
displays are showing like real like real violence, people that
are like stabbed to death with blood all over and stuff,
and just thinking about that one day a year that
it's totally okay to celebrate like serial killers and mass murderers,
and then the other times you're just supposed to be like, yeah,

(32:55):
this is not a good thing at all, you know.

Speaker 2 (32:57):
It's just a little weird.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
Yeah, And another specific example they brought up was that
there is a dead child's spine used as a purse handle.
Like we talked about that. What the Jona thing are
a lot case too? Didn't he sell like a human
skin purse society. Yes, there is a major difference between
medical specimens being on display and using them for things

(33:22):
like making purses. But if you really want to look
at the whole thing about it being used as decor
I mean Halloween as a concept in this modern age
twenty twenty six, the whole entire thing is disrespectful. So like,
I don't know where you want to draw the line, Like, yeah,
it's not right, but guess what people do it? So
people do other horrible tacky decorations do It's just kind

(33:46):
of the way the culture has evolved till today. Yeah,
I mean Halloween started as this like nice end of
winter harvest ritual from Irish people, and now is turned
into this totally gory mess. So like how did we
get from his place to the other?

Speaker 2 (34:01):
It is really unusual.

Speaker 3 (34:03):
Actually, if if I think about like when I was
a kid in the decorations versus now, it's just it
like when I was a kid, we had like jack
land or pumpkins and like the scary black cat and
witches and things like that, and now we've gone to like, Okay,
we're gonna put a wood chipper on the front lawn
and make it look like someone got stuck at it

(34:24):
and their blood is like spattered all over the front lawn.
And someone even propped like a car to make it
look like a car accident with a person that got
hit by a car across against a tree.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
Yeah, and I mean, just like so outrageous people are
wrapping skeletons, fake or real, in trash bags and hanging
them from trees. Like where are we going to draw
the Line's there's.

Speaker 3 (34:49):
This one house too near us that it I mean,
as of last time I drove by it, it's still up.
It's it's a body that looks like it's wrapped up
in a black trash with like duct tape around the
neck and around the feet, and it's hanging from their tree,
and I'm just like, dude, it's like Christmas, why is

(35:10):
this still here with those stupid big skeletons. I'm just
kind of like I get it for like the day
of but the next day it's like you have to
get rid of it because it just looks so bizarre.

Speaker 2 (35:21):
I think we.

Speaker 1 (35:22):
Need to implement a fifteen day rule. You have fifteen
days to get rid of the prior holidays.

Speaker 3 (35:29):
I still have my outside Christmas decorations up. I'm such
a slacker. It seriously is like I got back from
the trip. It was just like a boom boom boom,
Like got back from the trip. It was it's been
ten and twenty degrees outside, and then everybody's been sick
this week, Like I just have to go out there
and next week. I mean, according to everything, we're getting

(35:51):
like five feet of snow on this weekend.

Speaker 1 (35:53):
So it's not happening this weekend either. Dude, it's Valentine's Day.
You need to get your shit together.

Speaker 3 (36:00):
Creations are pink, so technically they could be Valentine's Day.

Speaker 1 (36:03):
Nutcrackers are not the Nutcrack. I unplugged, I unplugged the Nutcracker.
Oh my, you need to get on that iPod stuff.
I don't care, like judge me all you want. I
took the ones down inside like get over it?

Speaker 3 (36:17):
All right, guys.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
Well, we have some Valentine's Day merse speaking of it's
really cool.

Speaker 3 (36:21):
Actually we made this collection inspired by Victorian Morning jewelry,
so it's really really cool.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
Yeah, it is really cool. I hope you guys enjoy.
We have three new designs on there, so they are
available to buy as a T shirt and a sweatshirt.
They are super cute, so you get head over to
the doormattershop dot com to buy those, or head over
to website hit shop or click shop. In the description
of every episode we have the links there. Also, our
City Vineyard tickets are available for purchase for our live

(36:49):
show on February twenty first. It's gonna be so fun
and some of our other true crime fit or friends
might be popping in as well, so you definitely don't
want to miss that. But we will see you guys
with orrow episode.

Speaker 3 (37:01):
Sayah, thank you for listening to Mother nos Death. As
a reminder, my training is as a pathologist's assistant. I
have a master's level education and specialize in anatomy and
pathology education. I am not a doctor and I have
not diagnosed or treated anyone dead or alive without the

(37:23):
assistance of a licensed medical doctor. This show, my website,
and social media accounts are designed to educate and inform
people based on my experience working in pathology, so they
can make healthier decisions regarding their life and well being.
Always remember that science is changing every day and the

(37:44):
opinions expressed in this episode are based on my knowledge
of those subjects at the time of publication. If you
are having a medical problem, have a medical question, or
having a medical emergency, please contact your physician or visit
an arth care center, emergency room.

Speaker 2 (38:02):
Or hospital.

Speaker 3 (38:03):
Please rate, review, and subscribe to Mother Knows Death on Apple, Spotify, YouTube,
or anywhere you get podcasts.

Speaker 2 (38:11):
Thanks

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