Willed Body Case Still Not Laid to Rest

More than a year after a scandal broke over the misuse of bodies donated to UC Irvine for medical and scientific research, an Orange County district attorney’s investigation drags on with no charges filed.

A promised legislative hearing on the matter was never held.

Meanwhile, a score of civil suits have been filed against UCI as well as Christopher Brown, the key figure in the case, who was fired as director of the school’s Willed Body Program, and others. The lawsuits charge them with misusing bodies, losing or misidentifying ashes of loved ones and causing the families anguish.

Brown, 28, has declared bankruptcy and is working as a bouncer. He is still engaged in a rancorous arbitration battle with UCI to regain his job.

Officials in the district attorney’s office have declined to talk about the case. The long-running investigation, though, is putting a crimp in the civil cases.

That’s because when attorneys attempted to depose Brown Nov. 15 for the lawsuits, he invoked his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination to all questions, even when asked his name. Lawyers had expected him to do just that, because the possibility of criminal charges is still hanging over him.

Brown is representing himself in the lawsuits.

Andrew Porterfield, a spokesman for the UCI Medical School, said it was not appropriate for the university to comment on pending litigation.

But in the aftermath of the scandal, the Willed Body Program, which used about 75 cadavers a year, shut down for almost six months. In April, the program began accepting bodies again. Medical school dean Dr. Thomas C. Cesario said UCI has tightened up the program, with written procedures and policies, an advisory group, a system for tracking body parts, increased supervision and a more experienced program director making almost twice Brown’s $33,000 a year.

The scandal became public in September 1999 after a routine audit found that Brown had charged the university for a trip to Phoenix. University officials said Brown had sold six spines to a hospital there in exchange for a $5,000 check made out to a company UCI officials had not heard of.

UCI officials have said Brown is suspected of selling donated cadaver parts for personal gain and having ties to companies that profited from his program.

At least two donated cadavers were used without university permission in a private anatomy class in the Willed Body Program morgue, and families may have received the wrong remains or been improperly billed for the return of their relatives’ ashes.

The problems at the Willed Body Program followed several other notorious incidents at the medical school. In 1995, it was revealed that doctors there had secretly stolen ova from scores of women and implanted them in other patients. Two years later, cancer researchers improperly charged patients for experimental treatments, and in 1998, a professor used patients’ blood samples for research without receiving permission.

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State Sen. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough), chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Government Oversight, in January had said the succession of problems at UCI would be the focus of hearings. Those hearings were never held.

Speier staff member Richard Steffen said the reason probably was that Speier, who is also chairwoman of the Senate Insurance Committee, had her attention diverted by the highly publicized hearings involving Insurance Commissioner Charles Quackenbush, who resigned his post.

Steffen said he interviewed UCI employees and members of families whose relatives’ ashes had been lost. He also met with medical school dean Cesario and UCI Chancellor Ralph J. Cicerone.

“They were really concerned,” Steffen said. “They didn’t want a hearing.”

UCI, for its part, still has not been able to identify four bodies in its morgue.

Cesario said that about 2,000 bodies have gone through the program over the years, and officials continue to search university and public records to try to determine their disposition. “The vast majority of people, we couldn’t specify what happened to them,” Cesario said.

The university first is trying to figure out what happened to the bodies of the 200 people who were the subjects of family inquiries.

The scandal has fallen heaviest on Brown, whom the university has blamed for the problems. Besides losing his job and having the possibility of criminal charges hanging over him, in July he filed for protection under Chapter 13 of the federal bankruptcy code. His petition showed assets of $137,570 and liabilities of $158,457.

In a recent telephone interview with The Times, Brown sounded near tears.

“I haven’t done anything,” he insisted. “Forty families are suing me for $48 million. My life’s ruined, and no one will hire me.”

He and his wife have moved in with her parents and are renting out their three-bedroom, 2 1/2-bath Tustin condominium. Brown, an embalmer by training, is working as a bouncer at a bar.

Brown insists he’s a scapegoat for higher-ups at the university who knew everything that was going on. He talks of professors using cadavers for unauthorized classes and bodies being sold to for-profit businesses and other professors pulling gold fillings from cadavers and selling them.

Cesario denied the accusations.

Despite refusing to answer questions at the deposition, Brown promises that his story will eventually come out. “No cremated remains were given to the wrong people,” he said.

“You’ve got a university that has a history of not putting standards or proper guidelines on employees,” said Melvyn Sacks, Brown’s criminal attorney, harking back to the previous controversies. “I don’t think he committed any crimes. They had to lay it on somebody because they were going to catch heat for not setting standards.”

The district attorney’s office interviewed Brown once, for about an hour, Brown said. He can’t forget the date--Sept. 17, 1999, the day he received the letter from UCI firing him.

No one at UCI other than Brown has been disciplined as a result of the scandal, Cesario said.

Brown’s former boss, Richard Robertson, chairman of the anatomy and neurobiology department, has said he trusted Brown and did not closely supervise him.

Such assertions don’t sit well with Grant Miner, president of the University Professional and Technical Employees, Local 8, who is representing Brown in his attempt to get his job back. Miner says Robertson and anatomy professor Robert Blanks were aware of everything that happened.

“Chris Brown was only following the existing protocol for the department,” Miner said. “He did nothing his predecessor didn’t do. Basically, the university is looking for a scapegoat here. They picked the lowest-paid, lowest-titled employee in this program to hang this on.”

The other key figure besides Brown is Jeffrey E. Frazier, owner of Harry’s Transport, among others, which had a contract to deliver cadavers to the program. Brown briefly had an interest in the company but said he divested himself when he thought it might present a conflict of interest.

Frazier’s companies billed families for the pickup of bodies and the return of cremated ashes, fees that the university says were improper. Frazier also owned Replica Notes, which university officials say ran unauthorized anatomy classes using UCI cadavers.

Frazier has refused to answer reporters’ questions since his name surfaced in connection with the Willed Body Program, and his attorney declined comment last week.

Replica Notes was best known on campus for taking notes of UCI professors’ lectures and selling them to students.

After the cadaver controversy broke and a lawsuit against another note-taking company in Northern California, Replica came under pressure from UCI officials for doing unauthorized business on campus.

Its store in University Town Center across from campus has closed, although Frazier continues to live nearby. An article in the student newspaper said Replica had been sold.

Cesario is hoping this is the last of the scandals at the medical school, but said he can’t guarantee anything with a faculty of 500 and 1,000 students.

“Since the fertility things, we’ve been actively looking for things,” Cesario said. “We found them and dealt with them and went to the press with them. So we deserve a certain amount of credit for finding things. We are not aware of any major problems brewing but continue to look.”