Don’t Buy Those Brains For Sale On eBay — They’re Probably Stolen

(Mike Rollerson)

Are you in the market for some nice braaaaaaains? Er, brains? If you see some jars of human brains for sale on eBay, it’s probably best not to purchase them. Police in Indianapolis say a man had been breaking into the Indiana Medical History Museum and boosting brains and other preserved body parts and selling them, because apparently there’s a market for such a thing.

While we’re not sure pickled brains would even be attractive to zombies, at least one person forked over hundreds of dollars on eBay and then reported the exchange to the authorities, says the Indy Star.

Police claim the 21-year-old broke into the museum multiples times this year to boost the brains of dead mental patients. The museum used to be the Central State Hospital, which treated patients with psychiatric and mental disorders between 1848 and 1994.

The tipster told cops he’d snagged six jars of human brains on eBay for the tidy sum of $600 — plus shipping, natch — but had gotten suspicious when he saw labels on the containers that indicated the brains might not be on the up and up.

Police used that eBay transaction to track down the seller and subsequently set up a sting earlier this month, pretending that someone wanted to meet in the parking lot of a Dairy Queen and buy some brains from the man. He’d allegedly stolen 60 jars of human tissue from the museum just the day before.

Cops busted the suspect during the parking lot deal and has been charged with theft, marijuana possession and paraphernalia possession. No word on whether he was hawking the brains as some kind of Wizard of Oz but the museum’s executive director is mightily displeased that anyone would boost such items.

“It’s horrid anytime a museum collection is robbed,” she said. “A museum’s mission is to hold these materials as cultural and scientific objects in the public interest. To have that disturbed — to have that broken — is extraordinarily disturbing to those of us in the museum field.”

As for the man who was in the market for the brains in the first place, she adds that he said he just liked to collect “odd things.” Or he was secretly a scarecrow.

Police: Indy man stole brains from museum, sold them for cash [Indy Star]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist