Arrest Made in Cadaver Inquiry

An embalmer hired by UCLA’s medical school to keep better track of cadavers donated for study and research was arrested Saturday on suspicion of grand theft, part of an investigation by campus police into allegations that he and another employee sold corpses and body parts for profit.

Henry Reid, director of UCLA’s willed body program, was taken in handcuffs from his Anaheim home after at least eight UCLA police officers searched his property for several hours and left with several boxes. Reid would not comment Saturday as he was taken into custody. He is being held at Los Angeles County Jail, and bail was set at $20,000.

The university will seek felony charges against Reid, said Nancy Greenstein, director of police community services for the UCLA Police Department. More arrests are likely, according to a UCLA statement issued Saturday night.

Police are investigating whether Reid, 54, and a second, unidentified employee falsified documents to sell dozens of bodies and parts of bodies for personal gain over a five-year period, said sources close to the investigation. UCLA has placed the two employees on leave.

The university’s willed body program, the oldest in the country, receives about 175 donated bodies every year and has a waiting list of more than 11,000 people who have agreed to donate their bodies for use by researchers and medical students. The school has put a guard on the seventh floor of UCLA Medical Center, where cadavers -- worth thousands of dollars to biomedical firms -- are stored in a large freezer.

Reid was named director in 1997, a year after the school was sued by the families of cadaver donors for allegedly failing to properly dispose of their remains. Families have accused UCLA, for example, of putting ashes from cremated bodies into dumpsters taken to a landfill and then lying to loved ones.

UCLA attorneys said as recently as last month in court papers that they had fixed all problems in their cadaver program. Lawyers for families and donors were seeking an order requiring the university to treat corpses properly. But court Commissioner Bruce Mitchell tentatively ruled Feb. 10 that UCLA had proved the program was working well under Reid.

“There is evidence that [Reid] ... instituted comprehensive new protocols, which are being followed and which comply with industry standards,” Mitchell wrote in his preliminary ruling.

Louis Marlin, a lawyer for UCLA, said he had asked Mitchell to hold off signing the final ruling after learning of the latest allegations against the program.

“To tell you that this was one of the most disappointing moments in my 31-year legal career is an understatement,” he said. “We were very proud of the steps that Henry Reid convinced everyone he had taken, and we frankly are devastated.”

In fact, Reid testified in a November 2002 deposition that he did not recall hearing any allegations of the illegal sale of body parts at UCLA. His assistant testified in January that UCLA did not sell body parts from the willed body program.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs said the investigation shows that the university failed to closely watch over Reid. “This program was put into question a long time ago,” said Mike Arias, a West Los Angeles lawyer. “I expected, and maybe I was foolish to think this, that there would be oversight from a higher level.

“You’re talking about people giving almost the ultimate gift -- themselves, their body -- to science, to society,” Arias added.

A review of depositions in the 1996 case showed that several people familiar with UCLA’s cadaver program worried that body parts were being taken from cadavers and sold.

Vidal Herrera, director of the program from 1993 to 1994, said Saturday that he had heard rumors about UCLA selling body parts as recently as this year.

Herrera said there was a constant demand for bodies and body parts by private firms conducting research.

“Sadly, in this industry,” he said in an August 2002 deposition, “people are aware that there’s tissue out there, as we say, floated out there. And if they need the tissue, they know who to go to.”

A man who transported bodies from UCLA to the crematorium in the mid-1990s said the operation was a mess.

“I had never seen anything like it,” Joseph Delgado testified in a 1999 deposition. “And I had been involved in making removals and going to medical schools. ... It was sickening, the stench and the way they had everything.”

Delgado testified that cadavers often could not be identified, which prevented the crematorium from disposing of them. In response, he said, UCLA employees would cut the heads off the cadavers and call the crematorium again to pick the bodies up. Cadavers without heads do not require identification. Delgado said he would be called back later to pick up the heads, according to the deposition.

The problems came to light in 1993, when a funeral-at-sea operator hired by UCLA discovered a box of ashes mixed with medical waste, including broken syringes and used gauze.

In 1994, UCLA signed a settlement agreement with the state Department of Health Services agreeing to send all bodies off campus to be cremated, improve its policies for handling human and animal remains, hold a statewide conference on medical waste management and pay the state $49,500. The school at the time denied all wrongdoing.

Reid, a graduate of Cypress College with a degree in mortuary science, was hired to clean house. He has an embalmer’s license from the state and received the National Funeral Directors Mortuary Science Award, according to his testimony in the lawsuit.

Anthony Adinolfi, who taught anatomy at UCLA for 30 years before retiring two years ago, said Reid had implemented a bookkeeping system that closely tracked the movement of cadavers. Reid was responsible for cataloging all bodies as they arrived in the anatomy lab, arranging for the bodies to be embalmed and storing the bodies for use by students and researchers.

“When Henry came on board, everything seemed to work smoothly,” Adinolfi said from his Paso Robles home. “When I retired, he was in charge. I’m really surprised.”

Roy Bailey, a pathology assistant at UCLA Medical Center for 38 years before retiring in 1997, said doctors and medical school officials gave the willed body program little daily oversight. That might have allowed Reid to improperly label a body as unfit for use and sell it to a private firm, he said. Organs could have also been harvested and sold without permission, he said.

On Saturday, investigators searched Reid’s house, a black truck and a shed in his backyard. Several of his neighbors, who declined to give their names, said Reid was a pleasant, quiet man who had lived with his wife in their stuccoed working-class home for many years.

One police officer, who declined to be named, said the search warrant was obtained after news of the university’s investigation was disclosed Saturday by The Times. Investigators said they wanted to make sure that potential evidence was not destroyed after the article ran. UCLA employs sworn officers who have the same authority as any municipal police.

Former Gov. George Deukmejian agreed Friday to oversee reform of UCLA’s willed body program. He said he was contacted last week by attorneys for UCLA and the UC Board of Regents.

“The university and the leaders there at the medical school were very, very concerned and troubled about what they had just recently discovered,” Deukmejian said Saturday.

UCLA lawyer Marlin said “Reid was made to report on a regular basis to his superiors. He was asked at times to produce documents, showing how he was tracking cadaveric material, and he did it.

“The problem is -- as, frankly, in any large business or university -- if someone like Reid is going to engage in conduct with the intention of keeping it hidden, it is entirely possible that they can do it despite their best efforts.”

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Times staff writers Matt Lait, Joel Rubin, Jeffrey L. Rabin and Christine Hanley contributed to this report.