INDIANAPOLIS (TheBlaze/AP) — A man who allegedly stole human brain samples from a medical history museum was arrested after a California man who collects “odd things” bought some of the tissue online and then alerted authorities.
David Charles, 21, was arrested Dec. 16 after investigators were tipped off by a San Diego man who became suspicious about six jars of brain tissue he’d bought on eBay for $600.
human brain
In an unusual case, a man is accused of stealing human tissue samples, including preserved brains, and sold them online. (Image source: Curious Expeditions/Flickr)
Charles faces theft and other charges. It wasn’t immediately clear whether he has an attorney.
man who stole brain
David Charles is accused of stealing human brains and other samples from a medical museum. (AP video/Indianapolis Metro Police Department)
Marion County court documents allege Charles broke into the Indiana Medical History Museum several times over the past year and stole jars of preserved human tissues, including brain samples, from long-dead psychiatric patients.
The museum is on the grounds of a former state psychiatric hospital, Central State Hospital, which closed in 1994. The museum’s director said the tissues are from autopsies spanning from roughly the 1890s to the 1940s.
“It’s horrid anytime a museum collection is robbed,” the museum’s executive director, Mary Ellen Hennessey Nottage, told The Indianapolis Star. “A museum’s mission is to hold these materials as cultural and scientific objects in the public interest. To have that disturbed — to have that broken — is extraordinarily disturbing to those of us in the museum field.”