Americans Stole Human Body Parts to Smuggle to Las Vegas

Content note: articles contains descriptions of grievous bodily harm.

Authorities want to arrest two Americans for allegedly stealing a dead baby's head and foot, an adult's heart, and some tattooed flesh from Bangkok's Medical Museum and attempting to smuggle the body parts to Las Vegas.

Bangkok police had questioned Ryan McPherson, 31, and Daniel Tanner, 33, on Saturday (November 15) but released them—without charges—after Mr. McPherson allegedly said he purchased the human body parts in a Bangkok street market and sent them by DHL to a friend in Las Vegas, Nevada, as a joke.

On Tuesday (November 18), a Bangkok criminal court issued an arrest warrant for both Americans after police and museum officials said the body parts had been stolen from the museum's extensive forensic exhibits.

Police said they notified Interpol to help grab the two men who crossed the border on Sunday (November 16) from Thailand into Cambodia.

Thai police seized the gruesome items when a DHL office in Bangkok routinely inspected the shipment by X-ray and were horrified by the contents.

Police found plastic containers filled with formaldehyde and a baby's head, a baby's foot sliced into three parts, an adult heart damaged by stabbing, and some square sheets of skin tattooed with a traditional tiger and animist designs.

"The packages were marked 'children's toys' but X-rays showed they were not children's toys," National Police Commissioner's assistant, Police Lt. Gen. Ruangsak Jaritake, told reporters on Monday (November 17).

Police determined the body parts were surgically cut and packaged, so they contacted medical officials for help.

On Monday (November 17), police said the items were stolen from Bangkok's Siriraj Medical Museum, which is part of prestigious Siriraj Hospital where Thailand's elderly king and queen are currently undergoing treatment for various illnesses.

The museum occupies several floors displaying hundreds of grisly forensic exhibits, including a suicidal man's laminated sliced brain showing the ripped, tunneling path of a self-inflicted bullet wound.

A row of diseased dead babies standing upright in large jars of fluid on a sunny window ledge includes some infants with an attached umbilical cord spiraling out of their tiny corpses.

Other curled, mutated fetuses are still encased in their mothers' wombs, professionally hacked in half to allow maximum viewing.

Exhibits also show a mummified cannibal, and puffed-up corpses of children killed by drowning, car crashes and disease, plus skeletal deformities and other medical oddities.

The elaborate museum was created to teach Thai medical students, but also invites international tourists to visit.

"According to CCTV footage, the foreigner who shipped the body parts visited the museum, but we did not see him take the body parts," Udom Kachintorn, dean of the hospital's Faculty of Medicine said, according to Agence France-Presse.

"Police will investigate to find out if the suspect put the body parts in his backpack, or bribed the museum staff," Mr. Udom said.

Mr. McPherson's alleged claim that he purchased the items in a street market sounded odd because human body parts are not usually sold in Thailand.

Bangkok's street markets do however include private individuals who spontaneously unload valuable household goods, antiques, official documents, Buddhist icons, and other unique items.

Thriving bazaars openly display for sale macabre-looking "zombies" and mysterious doll-like figures that look like blackened, petrified fetuses, but it is unclear how those items were created.

Many Thais are extremely superstitious and sometimes use what they believe are spirit-infused amulets, symbols, and other things during animist rituals or for personal protection and good luck.

In 2006, Mr. McPherson spent six months in a U.S. jail convicted of misdemeanors after pleading guilty in California for producing and selling "Bumfights" videos.

He created the videos when he was a teenager by paying homeless people to fight, bash their heads against walls, set their hair on fire and do other dangerous, painful acts.

A court had sentenced Mr. McPherson, then 23, and producer Zachary Bubeck, 28, to do community service but they refused to, and lied to the court about it, so a judge imposed jail sentences.

After his release from prison, Mr. McPherson voiced regret about making "Bumfights."

"I would feel like an asshole trying to justify something like 'Bumfights'," he said in a video uploaded in 2008, which displays a wall-mounted dart board with Osama bin Laden's face as a target behind Mr. McPherson.

In a 2006 interview with Polly Staffle, Mr. McPherson described himself as a "shockumentarian."

He said his recent film titled "King of the Jews" included "a full-on porn scene with soft lighting, porn music, etc. and nothing but dry humping after a little cheesy plumber skit...then I figured adding Jesus to the equation would add some depth."

Currently spelling his first name as "Ryen" instead of "Ryan," he recently posted some of his films, photographs and other work on a website named "Stab the Princess" -- which apparently refers to the website's picture of a nude obese woman gazing forlornly while clutching her breasts.

That website lists Mr. McPherson's contact telephone number with a Washington DC area code, and includes for example his photographs and video titled "INDIA: SHIT HOLE" showing a man with horrific burn injuries, plus hashish-smoking Hindu sadhu holymen, human cremations on burning wooden pyres, and other stark images.

Richard S. Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based journalist from San Francisco, California, reporting news from Asia since 1978, and recipient of Columbia University's Foreign Correspondent's Award. He is a co-author of three non-fiction books about Thailand, including "Hello My Big Big Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews; 60 Stories of Royal Lineage; and Chronicle of Thailand: Headline News Since 1946. Mr. Ehrlich also contributed to the final chapter, "Ceremonies and Regalia," in a new book titled King Bhumibol Adulyadej, A Life's Work: Thailand's Monarchy in Perspective.

His websites are
http://asia-correspondent.tumblr.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/animists/sets
https://gumroad.com/l/RHwa

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