Three severed human heads were left next to a Chicago man’s desk after he complained that some of the donated bodies to the body part distribution center where he works were not properly embalmed or stored.
The man says he also found burnt sage in the office and believes someone is sending him a nasty message.
Outraged by the alleged harassment, the employee reported the incident to the police and began considering filing a lawsuit.
On Wednesday, May 24, Dale Wheatley, whose official title is transportation coordinator, reported that the body part donations were sitting on a blue plastic storage tub by his desk, blasting his co-workers for what he believes was a poorly executed payback for an earlier complaint to higher-ups in the organization, according to People.
He filed a complaint about the conditions of the donations just the day before the incident.
Wheatley, 37, works for the Anatomical Gift Association of Illinois. This organization has shipped body parts to hospitals, funeral homes, and other medical institutions, including at least eight medical schools in the state, for almost half a century.
According to the website, the AGA “procures, prepares and preserves donations for medical and scientific study,” securing the donation of “an individual’s body after death.”
He believes certain personnel within AGA are neglecting the bodies. The sloppily kept inventory caused many of the cadavers to rot, grow mold, and in a few cases allowed rats to chew through the flesh of the bodies.
As a result, some of their clients send the donations back, he said in an interview with Fox 32.
Wheatley also complained about the heads by his desk.
“At first I was confused. My boss walked by, and I asked him why the heads were at my desk,” he said in an interview.
The boss responded nonchalantly, Wheatley claims. Without even addressing that the heads were at his desk instead of designated storage areas the boss said, “They need to get back with their bodies so we can send them to cremation.”
When Wheatley brought up that it was abnormal for the heads to be in his area, the boss said a lot of strange things were going on in the office.
Typically, Wheatley would retrieve the body parts from a particular area in the building and take them quickly to medical students for them to use in their studies. Students then dissect the body parts but return them to be cremated. After cremation, the process is to get the ashes and return them to their families.
Because this process has not been followed, the bodies are neglected, causing severe degradation and decomposition. This in turn affects multiple entities, including AGA, the students, and the families.
He said in the five years he has been with the company he never had actual heads placed near his workstation.
In addition to the oddly placed heads, the Black man says he believes his co-workers have been mocking him by burning sage in the office.
“I think they were trying to say it’s for warding off evil spirits and I was the evil spirit,” Wheatley said.
AGA’s executive vice president, William O’Connor, flat-out denied the harassment allegations, adding that handling body parts is part of Wheatley’s job description, the Chicago Tribune reported. Wheatley manages the room where bodies are held at AGA. The space is nicknamed the “rack room.”
While O’Connor denies Wheatley’s claim, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine anatomy lab manager Casey Tilden says this has been his experience working with the nonprofit.
Just a day before the heads appeared near Wheatley’s desk, Tilden sent an email to AGA complaining about the bodies’ poor condition by the time the donations arrived. Tilden said the donations were covered with flies or so twisted up that his office was unable to use them.
“There are a handful of donors that were recently delivered with feet and hands that show signs of decomposition,” Tilden said in the email.
Wheatley said this complaint was one of many.
The worker has secured an attorney, David Fish, to help him prove his case for harassment. The lawyer says his client’s alarm was an effort to better work conditions.
While Wheatley filed a complaint with the police, he also will be filing a claim with the Cook County Medical Examiner, the Illinois Department of Public Health, and the Illinois Department of Financial & Professional Regulation.
“He in general felt the facility needs to be improved. They need to treat the donors with more respect,” Wheatley’s lawyer said.
In the complaints, Fish spoke about his client, saying, “Mr. Wheatley believes that AGA should have, and utilize, a scale to weigh donors’ bodies to determine the amount of embalming fluid required to ensure they are not subject to premature rotting and shorted usefulness.”
If nothing is done about the complaints, Wheatley is prepared to file a lawsuit.
The worker called the facility “deplorable” at a news conference on Tuesday, June 6.
“It’s in shabby conditions,” he said. “If you’re in there for more than five minutes, if you start walking around, you start to stick to the floor.”
Wheatley also complained that when people in his office are called to do brain removals, oftentimes “they’re not sewn up correctly,” or bodies are simply not properly embalmed.
His outrage over these conditions and the careless work, according to Wheatley, made him a prime target, and he might possibly lose his job.
“I’ve never seen a situation where heads were left at somebody’s desk. That is unspeakable,” he said.
“Those are people’s family members,” Wheatley added. “They’re not a joke. … They gave their body to donate it to science.”
