Grosse Pointe Park Body Broker Rejects Plea Deal

GROSSE POINTE PARK, MI — Arthur Rathburn, the Grosse Pointe Park body parts broker accused of selling infected body parts on the black market, has rejected a plea deal, according to reports. He was indicted by a federal grand jury on criminal charges of wire fraud, three charges of making false statements and one charge of transporting hazardous material.

U.S. District Judge Paul Borman previously ruled grisly pictures and other evidence will be allowed at trial of the owner and operator of International Biological Inc., which leased body parts for medical or dental training. Some of the body parts tested positive for HIV, hepatitis and other infectious diseases, according to cout records.

Rathburn’s trial is scheduled to begin in February. He allegedly disposed of human biological waste by washing it down the drain or putting it in the garbage can like yesterday’s leftover chicken. He’s accused of cremating only the torsos of donors’ bodies after cutting off their limbs with a chainsaw, and storing their unembalmed heads in mouthwash before shipping them in blood-filled ice coolers on commercial flights. He allegedly lied to family members about how their loved ones’ corpses were treated.

Among those U.S. Assistant Attorney Timothy Wise intends to call as a witness is an official with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control who had corresponded extensively in emails with Rathburn about concerns about the body parts his business leased.

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Rathburn, who is currently in federal detention in Milan, could go to prison for up to 20 years on each of the felony charges. The rejected deal would have reduced the sentence to between 78 and 97 months.
Rathburn’s attorney, Byron Pitts, said his client maintains his innocence. “Why would an innocent man take a plea deal?” Pitts told The Detroit News.

Rathburn’s wife, Elizabeth Rathburn, agreed to cooperate with the government in her guilty plea last March to one count of wire fraud. She has not yet been sentenced because she will be a witness in her husband’s trial, but could serve between four and 10 months in prison.She has been ordered to pay $55,000 in restitution.

When FBI agents raided the International Biological Inc. warehouse near Detroit's airport in 2013, they seized more than 1,000 body parts that had been kept on ice. The FBI had been tracking him for years after questions were raised about some unusual packages arriving for him at Detroit Metro Airport.

During the course of the investigation, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention intercepted a shipment of human heads and necks from Tel Aviv to Detroit. Death certificates showed that one of the heads came from an individual whose cause of death was listed as “Sepsis, unknown bacteria,” even though representatives of Rathburn’s company had signed a statement indicating the body parts were free of infection, according to court records.

In another instance, a shipment of 18 human heads from Italy intercepted at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport included the head of one individual who had explicitly restricted his body to use by non-profit entities in the United States.

The motive, according to the FBI and federal prosecutors who spent years building the case against Rathburn, was greed. Court records show human cadavers fetched anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000; brains were sold for $600; and elbows and hands went for $850.

Before he became a for-profit body parts dealer, Rathburn was the coordinator of the University of Michigan’s anatomical donation program, a position he held from 1984 until he was fired in 1990 for selling bodies via his private business, which he started in 1989.

The FBI said in an affidavit that the body parts trade is not illegal, but “crimes have been committed.”

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