UCI, Families Confront New Questions on Bodies

UC Irvine is investigating why two families who donated their parents’ bodies to the medical school’s embattled Willed Body Program paid hundreds of dollars to outside companies instead of the university for the return of cremated remains.

In addition, both families are questioning whether they received the correct remains, given that they received ashes more than a year earlier than is typical when bodies are donated to the university.

The two families, who have come forward recently, are part of a widening probe by the district attorney’s office and the university into allegations that the Willed Body Program’s now-dismissed director, Christopher S. Brown, profited from the sale of body parts and cadavers and that he steered work to friends.

Brown’s attorney, Stephen Warren Solomon, declined to comment about the latest revelations. In past interviews Brown has denied any wrongdoing and said he kept his supervisors at UCI informed.

But the fact that the investigation has grown from UCI’s allegations to actual complaints from families leads to more questions about how donated bodies are being used, whether the returned remains are finding their way to the proper families and whether anyone was profiting from the Willed Body Program.

The first of the new cases is that of Anneliese Yuenger, an 82-year-old Santa Ana woman who died in April. The ashes the family received were identified with a tag that records show belonged to a collection of body parts cremated two months before her death. The Yuenger case provides the first evidence that the remains of a cadaver donated to UCI were returned to the wrong people.

A computer virus destroyed most of the program’s records, and UCI officials are trying to determine if cremated remains have been returned to the 34 families that requested them in the past three years.

The story Yuenger’s children tell includes unusual details that make a strange situation stranger. For example, the ashes were not delivered to the family, nor were the Yuengers told they could pick them up at the funeral home or at the university. Instead, a daughter, Diane Yuenger, met someone at a parking lot across from UCI to pick up her mother’s remains.

She also handed over a $600 check for the ashes--the standard UCI charge--to Harry’s Transport, a company that had a contract to move UCI’s cadavers.

“That was unusual, but this wasn’t like something we do every day,” said Anneliese Yuenger’s son, Paul Yuenger.

Although Harry’s Transport moved cadavers for UCI, Brown held an interest in the company for a short time. Brown’s attorney said his client was not a partner in Harry’s when the transaction occurred. Company owner Jeffrey E. Frazier also is the owner of Replica Notes, which ran a private anatomy class at UCI with a cadaver donated to the university.

A second case, that of 78-year-old Joseph Coghill, also shows that someone other than the university cashed a check for the fee the university charges a donor’s family for the return of ashes.

Skip Coghill said his father died May 12 in Palm Desert of a heart attack. Coghill agreed to donate his father’s body to the Willed Body Program the next day.

Five days later, a representative from UCI’s Willed Body Program picked up Joseph Coghill’s body, said Bill Mitchell, general manager of the Palm Springs Mortuary. Mortuary records do not indicate which company delivered Coghill to UCI, and the signature of the person who made the stop is illegible, Mitchell said.

Coghill said he was told he wouldn’t get his father’s ashes for at least two years, which is the usual time needed for bodies to be prepared and used for research and teaching.

Yet records show Coghill was cremated in June, a source said. On Aug. 4, Coghill’s son recalled, Brown contacted the family and offered to return the remains. Skip Coghill said the family wrote a check for several hundred dollars to cover the cost of having the ashes returned to the family.

The university did not receive a check for the remains, said William Parker, associate executive vice chancellor at UCI.

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Brown was placed on leave Aug. 9 and fired Sept. 24. A delivery service delivered the ashes around Aug. 20, Coghill said, in a standard cardboard shipping box.

“We’re questioning whether that’s my dad’s remains,” Coghill said.

The Yuengers and Coghills have contacted Newport Beach lawyer Federico Castelan Sayre, who has filed a lawsuit against the university and Brown on behalf of a North Tustin family that questions the handling of a relative’s remains.

The evidence that the Yuengers received the wrong ashes came in the form of a bronze-colored, circular metal tag among the remains bearing the number 020762. State law requires a numbered identifying “disk, tab or other permanent label” be placed in the container with the remains before they are released from the crematory. Dick Fisher, a spokesman for Forest Lawn Memorial Park, said the tag goes into the oven with the body for identification once it is reduced to ashes.

The invoices Roosevelt Memorial Park sent to the university show that the number on the tag returned to the Yuenger family was assigned to UCI “cadaver parts” cremated there Feb. 24, two months before her death. Organs and other parts separated from bodies during dissection routinely are cremated together, medical experts say.

The cremation of bodies so close to their death is unusual.

Cadavers donated to the Willed Body Program generally are embalmed and kept for a year while chemicals permeate the bodies. The bodies are then used for medical purposes for a year or more. In limited cases, unembalmed bodies are used fresh to perfect surgical procedures because embalmed tissue does not have the feel of a live body. The university cremates some donated bodies shortly after death if they are deemed unusable because they are too emaciated or obese or testing showed they carried an infectious disease, such as HIV or hepatitis B or C.

Dr. Peter Lawrence, an associate dean now serving as interim director of the program, estimated that rapid cremation takes place in 10% to 20% of cases.

Paul Yuenger said his mother died of respiratory failure, was of normal weight and did not have any infectious diseases.

UCI officials, scrambling to recreate lost computer records, said they are unable to identify five of the 26 bodies remaining in the program’s morgue. Based on the approximate age and sex of an unidentified cadaver, Parker said there is a remote possibility Anneliese Yuenger’s body is among the five.

Officials said the university will decide today how to identify the bodies without subjecting family members to viewing the cadavers, some of which have been dissected.

DNA matching is a possibility, but it is time-consuming and expensive. The simplest solution, fingerprinting, often doesn’t work on embalmed bodies.

Times staff writer Meg James contributed to this story.