Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Bodycam: Man Caught Stabbing His Parents To Death

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

Police officers in West Valley, Utah were dispatched to an unknown trouble call on New Year's Day and found Erik Bertelsen with a knife after stabbing his parents. An officer fired at Bertelsen and killed him. Kerry and Terri Bertelsen did not survive the stabbing by their son, who had been released from prison and admitted to smoking meth. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy breaks down the body camera footage with former SWAT Team Assistant Leader Chad Ayers in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:Download the FREE Upside App at https://upside.app.link/crimefix to get an extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas.Host:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest:Chad Ayers https://x.com/ayerscg497CRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. A funeral home worker admits to selling body parts she was handling at work on the black market. I have the disturbing case that stretches from Arkansas to Massachusetts that includes a ring of people and two universities. Welcome to Crime Fix.

I'm Anjanette Levy. Just when you think you've heard it all, there's another case that crops up that leaves you thinking, what? And this case is one of those. It involves dead body parts, two medical schools, one was Harvard, and a number of people. Let's start with this woman. Her name is Candace Chapman Scott of Little Rock, Arkansas. She worked at a funeral home that took in cadavers used for research at the University of Arkansas Medical School. Last week, a federal judge sentenced her to 15 years in prison for transporting body parts, some of them fetuses, out of state and conspiracy to commit mail fraud. Court documents lay out a little bit of what she's admitted to.

Candace Chapman Scott stole human remains from Business One in Little Rock, Arkansas, without the knowledge or permission of Business One or any client of Business One, including UAMS, that's the University of Arkansas Medical School, and Business Two, and sold and shipped them to Jeremy Pauly in the Middle District of Pennsylvania. Stolen human remains sold and shipped in interstate commerce by the co-conspirators included bones, skulls, skin, dissected faces and heads, internal organs often referred to by various co-conspirators as wets or wet specimens, including brains, lungs, and other and whole stillborn corpses. You're probably thinking to yourself, what on earth and why?

Well, there's apparently a black market for dead body parts. Federal prosecutors say a worker from Harvard Medical School and his wife were even in on this. But let's get to Jeremy Pauly. Pauly is from Pennsylvania, and he admitted to paying Scott thousands of dollars for the body parts. He pleaded guilty to abuse of a corpse and got probation in county court, but faces a maximum of 15 years in federal prison when he's sentenced in federal court. He's a self-proclaimed oddities collector and even owns a store where he sells oddities, and once described himself as a blood artist. His website describes himself as the lead preservation specialist of retired medical specimens and curator to historic remains and artifacts at his museum. The information filed in the federal case reveals a lot. The information states, on or about October 28th, 2021, Candace Scott sent Jeremy Pauley a message through Facebook stating, I follow your page and work and love it. I'm a mortician and work at a trade service mortuary.

So we are contracted through the medical hospital here in Little Rock to cremate their cadavers when the medical students are done with them before they discard them in a cremation garden. Just out of curiosity, would you know anyone in the market for a fully intact embalmed brain? The document goes on to say that Scott sent Jeremy Pauly a message through Facebook stating, I actually just looked and I have two embalmed with skullcap. Jeremy Pauly instructed Scott how to package the parts. That same day, federal prosecutors say Scott sent a photo of a heart and another organ to Polly on Facebook Messenger, and Polly responded he was interested in the heart and the brains. Scott then asked, would $1,200 shipped sound reasonable for all

three pieces, including skull caps? Jeremy Polly responded, you are literally on the same page because that was going to be my offer, LOL. Pauly paid Scott $1,200 through PayPal. In fact, all of the payments for the various body parts, many, many different body parts and organs were all made through PayPal. But one of the saddest parts of this case has to do with a stillborn baby named Lux. He was supposed to be cremated

in February 2022, but that didn't happen. The information says, on or about February 9th, 2022, Candace Chapman Scott stole Lux's remains without the knowledge or permission of Business One, Business Two, nor DS and agreed to sell his remains to Jeremy Pauly for $300. Scott took photos of Lux's remains and sent the photos to Jeremy Pauly through Facebook Messenger. Jeremy Pauly paid Scott $300 through PayPal. This is the kind of case that makes you wonder about the people involved and that's why Truthfinder is such a great website. It's the largest public record search service out there. I put Jeremy Pauley's name into Truthfinder and the abuse of a corpse charge he pleaded guilty to in Cumberland County Court

shows up along with traffic infractions. Truthfinder is really great because it will show you criminal and traffic records, a person's past and current addresses, phone numbers, and social media accounts. And the thing that I love about it, you can see the sex offenders who live near you. So you can try it right now and get 50% off of confidential background reports. Just log on to www.truthfinder.com slash lccrimefix and start accessing information about almost anyone. Jeremy Pauly then traded Lux's remains to a man named Matthew Lampe for five human skulls and $1,500. At Scott's sentencing, his mother said she couldn't imagine her dead baby being shipped around like an Amazon package. The U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas said in a statement following Scott's sentencing,

Imagine learning that the cremated remains of your child given to you after their death were not actually those of your child because instead the FBI recovered the body of that child in another state. That is the shocking truth that happened in this case for the family of Baby Lux. Baby Lux was named Lux Cilium, which means light scent, and now his light has illuminated an evil and dark underworld of criminals who engage in the trafficking of stolen human bodies and body parts. And with help from the powerful testimony of Baby Lux's mother and grandmother at yesterday's sentencing hearing, the criminal responsible for the theft and trafficking of the bodies and body parts of many Arkansas victims, including Baby Lux, has been held accountable. So to talk about this incredibly disturbing case, I want to bring in a former federal prosecutor. He is Gene Rossi, and he's handled some crazy

cases over the years. I don't know if he's handled anything quite like this. So Gene, your thoughts on this. I mean, the feds deal with a lot of black markets for a lot of items, but this is a black market that exists for dead body parts. And we're talking about two major medical schools, Harvard Medical School being one of them that was kind of dragged into this. And we have people selling body parts and shipping them all around the country. I mean, have you ever heard of such a thing? Well, the irony is I'm at Harvard Law School teaching trial advocacy, so it's the perfect time to have this case discussed. But to have body parts stolen from Harvard Medical School, the morgue in Arkansas, the University of Arkansas Medical Science Department or unit. I have never in my 30 years as a federal prosecutor

and the last eight years as a criminal defense attorney, I've never personally been involved in, supervised, or even heard of a case of such gruelish, disgusting, and just cold-hearted actions by a defendant. And I'm not exonerating the conspirator, Mr. Pauly, who's from Pennsylvania, and he'll have his sentencing in a few weeks or a few months. But the conspiracy is just beyond the pale. 24 body parts. You can name any part of the body and it was sold. And, and Jeanette, I wanted to say this, the thing that hurts the most as a prosecutor, former, is they, they, they falsely represented the cremated remains of a baby. Right. Baby Lux. Baby Lux. And they represented that those were the remains. And of course, it turned out that that was a big fraud. That's very sad. Yeah. Baby Lux is what really gets me. Baby Lux, as I mentioned earlier here, was a stillborn baby.

I mean, his mother gave birth to a stillborn baby. And they wanted the cremains because that's what a lot of people want. And instead, Candace Scott shipped poor baby Lux off to Jeremy Pauly and then he traded poor baby Lux's body for some skulls and fifteen hundred dollars in cash. from cadavers, you know, people who donated their bodies to science who are saying, look, I want my body to be used to benefit, you know, the world, you know, the medical community. I want people to possibly benefit from experiments or what have you that can be conducted on my body or people to learn based on my, you know, body, you know, medical students or what have you. Um, so, but to take a body of a stillborn baby that was supposed to be cremated and then ship it off for 300 bucks and then, and then Jeremy made a profit off of it. Uh, that to

me was really one of the most stunning things if we're talking about selling people's dead body parts. Right. I do got a comment on a couple of things. This case reveals that there is a sick and perverted part of our society that that commercially exchanges these items, body parts, and there's a need for it. That's sad. But the second thing is the amount of money that they sold these body parts for, as I understand it, the main defendant, she sold body parts for $10,000. So it's not just the need, it's that she was willing to sell all these body parts at a price that was really not that high if you're going to be a criminal. So that just shows how sick this demand is on the part of the buyers and the sellers. There's no value for human life or the remains. There's no value for human life or the remains. There's no moral compass.

This is one of the most shocking cases I've ever seen. And I've hadn't handled murder cases. You know, Gene, it really makes you wonder, you know, a lot of, you know, to play devil's advocate, a lot of people will say, well, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. You know, they, I don't know what their argument would be. Obviously, Jeremy Pauly pleaded guilty really fast. I mean, he knew he knew he was in big trouble and he pleaded guilty. It looks like, you know, before anybody else, he knew he was caught and he knew what he did was wrong.

And so he's facing up to 15 years in prison when he's sentenced. But, you know, they may argue, well, it's a harmless crime. I'm just wondering how they justify this in their heads. But it's not. And it makes me wonder, because these are not theirs to be sold and taken. It makes me wonder, good God, does this go on a lot and it just flies under the radar? Because there are funeral homes all over this country. It makes you wonder, good God, does this go on? And we just don't know about it. Because I remember, just to tell a story, when my grandmother was cremated, they asked if we wanted to witness it, the process beginning. And so like my stepdad witnessed it. Like they,

I mean, it's apparently there, there must be some concern about this type of thing. Oh yes. The, the, the one I'm a Pollyanna on these two guilty pleas, the one shining light in this whole horrible scene and, and drama is that these two cooperators, the main defendant and Mr. Pauly, I hope they are providing to the prosecutors possible customers and suppliers in other jurisdictions. There may be other people, as you alluded to, in funeral homes, in morgues, in a medical examiner's office, at medical schools, not just Harvard Medical School. There could be other people that harbor in this area and have that sick attraction to the sale of body parts. And I hope that the prosecutors at the federal level

and the state level in Arkansas and Pennsylvania can take this cooperated cooperators information and hopefully prosecute many more people. Yeah. I mean, there are, I mean, there are a number of people, I mean, there there's Cedric Lodge, um, from Harvard medical school and his wife, his wife has already, um, pleaded, pleaded guilty. And there are other people, you know, I think there's six or seven people around the country, but I'm just wondering beyond that. And I'm like, well, these people are doing it on Facebook Messenger and PayPal and stuff like that. What about the dark web? That's what I'm wondering. I mean, all kinds of things happen on the dark web. I mean, the fact that they were

doing it on Facebook out in the open is also kind of astounding to me. They must have thought they were getting away with it, but they also knew it was wrong because there's some stuff in the information that leads you to believe that, you know, one of them even said something like about maybe having the Fed show up on their doorstep and things like that. So they knew what they were doing was illegal. Well, here's the thing. When they do go after any targets and they obtain cooperation from defendants, I can tell you this right now as now current defense attorney, there is no way, zero, that any of these cases would go to trial because just the facts on the surface would just repel any judge or jury. So that's the good news out of this, that when they find people who are culpable, that they're going to fold like a cheap suit

and probably plead guilty because there's just no defense. There's absolutely no defense. Yeah. And they have the goods on all of them with the Facebook messages, the PayPal payments, all of it. I mean, you know, the mail. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. sex trafficking and prostitution. It's like an iceberg. You see the tip of it and you try to deal with that, but there's many inches of ice below the surface. And I really believe that this is something that is very, very wide and more expansive than we want to believe. We want to believe this doesn't happen other than in these cases. But I think this, because there's a motive to sell and make some money, but there's a need. People want these body parts in a sick, perverted way. Pauly's a good example. He wants collectibles, oddities. All he needs to do is look in the mirror and he's seeing one right there.

But I do believe this is more widespread than we want to believe. Unbelievable. Jeremy Pauly, there's been some back and forth in his case. Do you see him getting the full 15 years? I mean, he faces up to 15. That's the maximum. So he pleaded guilty first, entered into a plea agreement right off the bat. So do you think he gets the full 15 or do you think the government recommends a little less because he cooperated so early. Well, based on the cooperation agreements I dealt with, and I dealt with hundreds, if not thousands, I would guess that he would get probably eight to 10 years because of his cooperation. And I don't know the extent of it, but so far he's provided a lot of information that got the main defendant. And I think he would get a reduction in his sentence at his sentencing of about 50 percent because of his cooperation. If I had a bet money. Well, it will be interesting. He has a Web site where he basically says he's a preservationist of medical specimens. So I don't know if he's still kind of doing this. I have no idea. You would think that maybe that would be a no-no with this stuff, but yikes. It's something and we'll keep an eye on it. Gene Rossi, thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Janette Levy. Thanks so much for being here. I'll see you back here next time.