Arkansas authorities are investigating a shipment of 40 to 60 human heads found by a Southwest Airlines employee at the Little Rock airport.
Southwest said the incident began last week when the carrier refused to carry a container because it was not properly labeled. When the heads were discovered, the employee called police, and the body parts were turned over to the county coroner.
NBC TV DFW reports the heads were being shipped in three containers by an Arkansas-based consulting firm, JLS Consulting, to the Fort Worth office of Medtronic, a top research and technology company based in Minnesota. The shipping parties claim the heads were to be used for educational and research purposes.
A spokesman for Medtronic said it is common for body parts for research to be shipped, but rare for the shipment to be seized.
But Arkansas authorities want to make sure everything is on the up and up.
"We’ve come to the conclusion that there is a black market out there for human body parts for research or for whatever reason," Pulaski County coroner Garland Camper told the NBC station. "We just want to make sure these specimens here aren’t a part of that black market and underground trade." (source: aol news)