An Arkansas woman has pleaded not guilty to charges that she sold stolen body parts from medical school corpses for $11,000 to a Pennsylvania man she met on social media.
The April 5 indictment, which was released on Friday in federal court in Little Rock, accuses Candace Chapman Scott, 36, a former mortuary employee, of selling 20 boxes of body parts to a guy she met through a Facebook group about "oddities."
Scott entered a not guilty plea to 12 counts, including conspiring to commit mail fraud, conspiring to commit wire fraud, conspiring to commit interstate transportation of stolen property, and actually transporting stolen material across state lines.
She is still detained while she waits for a hearing on Tuesday to determine whether or not she will be granted bail.
The man who allegedly purchased the remains was not named in the federal indictment. But he was identified as Jeremy Lee Pauley in separate state charges.
Scott was employed by the funeral home Arkansas Central Mortuary Services, where part of her duties included embalming, cremating, and transporting remains. The funeral home is where the medical school transferred the remains of cadavers that had been given for medical students to examine, according to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock.
In October 2021, Scott allegedly approached Pauley and began offering to sell him remains from the medical school that the mortuary needed to cremate and return.
"Just out of curiosity, would you know anyone in the market for a fully in tact, embalmed brain?" Scott wrote to Pauley in her first Facebook message, according to the indictment.
Jeremy Pauley reportedly bought 20 boxes of body parts off Facebook.
Candace Chapman Scott pleaded not guilty to 12 counts, including mail fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property and interstate transportation of stolen property.
In the next nine months, Scott sold Pauley fetuses, brains, hearts, lungs, genitalia, large pieces of skin and other body parts, the indictment alleges. The indictment claims that, in one incident, Scott sold the remains of a fetus at a discount because "he's not in great shape."
Scott allegedly promised Pauley "2 brains, one with skullcap, 3 hearts, one cut, 2 fake boobies, one large belly button piece of skin, [one] arm, one huge piece of skin, and one lung" for $1,600 in another communication from Dec. 2, 2021, according to the indictment. The very same day, Pauley sent Scott a $1,600 payment via PayPal.
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