THIS time a year ago, a child walking home from school in the woods near a rural town in Pennsylvania made a shocking discovery.
There, less than 30m from a main road and unconcealed, was a severed human head with two red balls where the eyes used to be.
Investigators have for the past 12 months chased dead-end leads to determine the woman’s identity. Despite more than 30 tip-offs from members of the public, they are no closer to discovering who she was and how her decapitated, embalmed head ended up where it did.
Police do, however, believe they know why she was killed. At a press conference in Beaver County overnight, police hinted that the middle-aged woman’s death could be linked to the black market trade in human body parts.
“There’s a black market on body parts and that market is pretty extensive,” District Attorney Anthony Berosh said.
“[The woman’s head] didn’t roll off a truck. It just didn’t happen that way.”
If it did happen the way police say, the woman’s fate was sealed because her organs would fetch her killer a handy price in an underground world experts say is “booming”.
Holding up a toy red rubber ball similar to those discovered in the woman’s eye sockets, local police chief Michael O’Brien said funeral home directors and medical examiners had told him they “have never even heard of [replacing] eyes that have been enucleated [removed] from the body”.
What happened to the woman’s eyes remains unknown but investigators know more about what happened to her body before she died.
Artist drawings of what the deceased may have looked like in her younger days (right) and when she died (left). Picture: Economy Police Department via APSource:AP
Beaver County coroner Teri Tatalovich-Rossi said the woman’s head was severed with jagged cuts on the exterior and more precise cuts on the interior. The time of death could not be determined but toxicology reports indicated the woman had trace amounts of drugs in her system. They think she died of heart failure.
“Could it have been someone with a great deal of anatomical knowledge? Yes. Could it have been someone who is just peculiar or bizarre? The answer to that question is also yes. We just don’t know at this point,” Tatalovich-Rossi said.
The Pittsburg Tribune reported that based on isotope testing — testing elements in the body that come from drinking water and food unique to a specific location — the woman spent the last seven months of her life in multiple locations ranging from Ohio to West Virginia, Maryland, New York and Pennsylvania.
The trade in human body parts is nothing new in America or around the world. Award-winning documentary filmmaker Ric Bienstock released a film entitled Tales from the Organ Trade last year, revealing every 60 minutes a human organ is sold on the black market. That market is not exclusive to the US or to any one region.
Four Corners reported last year that the black market was “booming” and authorities were powerless to stop it. But what are a pair of eyes worth? Or a kidney? Or a human head?
Gizmodo published a list of body parts and their prices in 2012. They estimated a pair of eyeballs would cost $1525, a heart would cost $119,000, a liver would cost $157,000 and a kidney was the most expensive organ in the body, valued at $262,000.
Police chief O’Brien said whatever the reason the woman was killed, he hoped somebody would soon help identify her.
“She deserves to have a name put to her face,” he said.
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