Apr. 1, 2010 (United Press International) -- A New Mexico man was charged Thursday in a case in which body parts that were supposed to be cremated and returned to families turned up in plastic buckets.
Paul Montano, 31, owner of Bio Care Southwest, was charged with three counts of fraud and was held on $100,000 bond, police said.
Employees at Stericycle Inc. (NASDAQ:SRCL) of Kansas City, Kan. -- which has a contract with Bio Care to dispose of leftover medical waste -- found a head and torso in a company incinerator, KCTV, Kansas City, Mo., reported.
The employees later found six more human heads and other body parts in large red plastic buckets inside a delivery truck at Stericycle, KCTV said. The buckets had labels from a company affiliated with Bio Care.
Montano did not respond to calls for comment, The Kansas City (Mo.) Star said. Stericycle officials declined to comment.
Bio Care, a 3-year-old company identified on its Web site as a non-profit organization, removes and sells organs and other body parts from donated bodies for medical research.
The bodies are kept refrigerated while the research is conducted, an affidavit states. When the researchers return the organs to Bio Care after their experiments are complete, Bio Care is supposed to send the remains for cremation and finally give the ashes to the families.
The Bio Care Web site, which promises to treat people "with dignity, respect and honesty," also touts the company's "free direct cremation, free transfer of body, free death certificate (and) free urn."
