Four mummies and a leg: Investigation launched after shocking discovery at Moscow cancer clinic
Four corpses and a sawn-off leg were stored in a fridge at a top Moscow cancer clinic for over a decade, turning into unrecognizable mummies. Investigators are working on site to establish if any criminal activity took place.
An internal check, ordered by the new director of the Blokhin Russian Cancer Research Centre, Ivan Stilidi, has triggered a horror story and a crime drama in one.
Stored in three wooden boxes resembling coffins, the bodies of four cancer patients and an amputated leg were discovered in the refrigerator at the center’s department of morbid anatomy.
The corpses had been lying there for more than a decade and turned into mummies that got so deformed that their age and sex couldn’t be immediately established.
Blokhin Center confirmed media reports, saying that “because for a lengthy period of time there was no demand for the four bodies from the relatives, a decision was made to hand them over to the law enforcement agencies in accordance with the Russian law.”
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Despite the statement by the medics making it sound like nothing special happened, the Investigative Committee has launched a probe into the grim find.
The investigators were sent to the Blokhin Center where they questioned the staff and sized a large bundle of documents.
It was soon established that several pages, with personal data of dozens of patients, were lacking in those records, sources told Mash Telegram channel.
The law enforcers suspect that those bodies could’ve been sold to anatomy museums or “special laboratories,” they said, adding that it was the prime version of the investigation.
A criminal ring inside the cancer center might’ve been concealing data on unaccounted for corpses – that are to buried by the city authorities – and stored them for the purpose of commercial gain.
The four mummies discovered during the check were likely still in the fridge as the heartless perpetrators were simply unable to find the buyer for them, the sources said.
A source within the Blokhin Center confirmed that the possible sale of unaccounted for bodies was “one of the versions” looked into by the investigators.
However, he insisted that reports of what he called “a gang of doctors” operating at the center were false.
The source also pointed out that “the investigators just didn’t have the time to go through such a large amount of papers during half a day since the seizure.”
The League for Protection of Doctors argued there was “no tragedy” about the incident as unaccounted for corpses are a common occurrence at medical facilities. With Blokhin Center being a huge organization, the bodies were likely left in the morgue for so long due to “some paper problems,” the NGOs head, Semyon Galperin, assumed.
The pervious head of the Blokhin Center, Mikhail Davydov, resigned last year after the clinic was caught making cancer patients, fighting for their lives, pay for the services they had every right to receive for free.
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