Arizona Man Says His Mother's Body Was Sold To The Military And Blown Up

An Arizona man was shocked to learn that his mother's body was sold to the U.S. military, where it was used for "blast testing." Jim Stauffer's mother died over five years ago after suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

Her doctors were surprised she had Alzheimer's disease because she did not have the gene for it and they were worried that the disease might have mutated. Stauffer wanted to donate her body to neurologists so they could study her brain and try to learn more about Alzheimer's disease.

Unfortunately, he had no luck finding doctors or researchers who were willing to accept her remains. He then got in touch with the Biological Resource Center, who quickly claimed her body and promised to donate it for medical research.

It turns out they did not send her body to scientists. Instead, they sold her body to the U.S. military, who used it to test the effects of explosives on the human body.

"She was then supposedly strapped in a chair on some sort of apparatus, and a detonation took place underneath her to basically kind of get an idea of what the human body goes through when a vehicle is hit by an IED," he told ABC15.

Stauffer had no idea what really happened to his mother's remains until Reuters launched an investigation into the Biological Resource Center, which was shut down by the FBI for running what agents described as a "human chop shop."

Reuters reached out to Stauffer and showed him documents that stated his mother's brain was never donated to science.

"I don't see a pathway of ever getting past this," he said. “ Every time there’s a memory, every time there’s a photograph you look at, there’s this ugly thing that happened just right there staring right at you.”

Stauffer is now involved in a lawsuit against the Biological Resource Center and its owner, Stephen Gore. While he admits that he still struggles with the fact that his mother's body was blown up, he hopes that the lawsuit will bring him some closure.

"[Gore] didn't care about the families, he didn't care about the people, and he didn't care about the memories," Stauffer said. "If I can be a little small part of his personal financial destruction, I don't care."