Preserved human parts — including an infant's head, a baby's foot and an adult heart — stolen from a medical museum in Thailand last month were discovered over the weekend by workers at a parcel-delivery company who put three Las Vegas-bound boxes labeled toys into an X-ray machine.
Thai police, whom the workers at DHL alerted to their discovery, say they identified the man who shipped the boxes as Ryan McPherson, a 31-year-old American tourist. Police say they questioned McPherson and another American, Daniel Tanner, 33, about the packages that contained five body parts.
McPherson reportedly told them he had found the parts at a night market in Bangkok.
"He said he thought the body parts were bizarre and wanted to send them to his friends in the U.S.," Police Col. Chumpol Pumpuang said.
His comments were reported by The Associated Press.
Both McPherson and Tanner were released and left the country this morning and were now in Cambodia, police said. Police also said they were contacting the FBI about those people to whom the packages were addressed.
Meanwhile, Udom Kachintorn, dean of the faculty of medicine at Bangkok's Siriraj Hospital, said today that the human remains were stolen from the facility's museums. He said McPherson and Tanner had visited the museums last week, but surveillance video did not show them taking anything.
Thailand