Six-year-old kid’s cranium on the market as ghouls flog stays on Facebook and eBay
Ministers face calls to outlaw the sale of human remains as experts warn thousands of body parts like skulls, bones and tissue are sold in the UK each year to collectors
A child’s skull being offered on social media(Image: Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP/Facebook)
Chilling photos show human remains being sold online as experts warn the vile trade is fuelling grave thefts.
A growing market for body parts means bones and tissue – often crafted into jewellery and items of furniture – are being sold on sites like Facebook, Instagram and eBay, campaigners say. Buyers have no idea where they come from.
In one case, The Mirror has been told, a skull belonging to a six-year-old child was offered to sick collectors, while in another a human skeleton was put in a fake coffin and dressed as a vampire. Dr Trish Biers, co-coordinator of the Trading and Sale of Human Remains Taskforce, told The Mirror thousands of body parts are sold in the UK each year.
Some, marketed as antiques, are sold to collectors and at horror shows – and she has been contacted by sellers offering her freshly dug up skeletons. Dr Biers said: “The red trade, as it’s often referred to, there’s a lot of really interesting research and it’s brutal. And we know of cases where there was murder and kidnapping, the stories are pretty dark.”
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Last week Labour backbencher Bell Ribeiro-Addy told stunned MPs that items like necklaces, wallets, crucifixes and candlesticks made from human remains were being sold online. The majority are sold as antiques and have come from around the world.
Dr Biers said: “There’s more tracking with a vegetable than a human head.” She said sellers falsely claim to have sourced the remains ethically. She said: “If you donate your body to science and medical research, that’s what you’re expecting your body to do. Not to be torn apart and then get put into a lamp.
“People need to think – before you buy that head of a six-year-old child from the Congo on Instagram, shouldn’t you be asking yourself what happens in that narrative?”
Fellow co-ordinator Dr Lauren McIntyre said there are no circumstances where remains used for medical research would be sold for profit. She said: “Actually quite a lot of them are trafficked remains of people from countries like India and China that were massive imported over here in the 20th Century.
“And another strand to problems associated with the trade is that it’s also linked to an uptick in things like church and graveyard vandalism and heritage crime.
“There’s places like heritage sites that are more at risk because when people cotton on to the fact that they can make £500, £800 or more from selling a skull or skeleton, they’re potentially taking the bones because they know that they can sell them online and make a ton of money on them.”
Osteoarchaeologist Dr McIntyre, said it is clear many remains on sale online have been dug up. She said: “We can see from remains that come up on auction websites and on Instagram and things like that, I can tell the difference between a skull is that’s been prepared medically and never been buried, and a skull that’s been in the ground for a long time.
“And quite a lot of these remains on an auction websites, they have been buried. So they’re coming from somewhere, whether that’s from a churchyard or from an archaeological site or somewhere else.”
And Dr Biers revealed: “I’ve had people contact me with pictures from a freshly dug grave saying ‘do you want to buy these?’ It’s worse than you could probably imagine.
“It’s just another form of human trafficking I think.” The experts said a growing number of private collectors are fuelling the trade.
Dr McIntyre said: “There’s a there’s a big curiosity market, so you see things like Satanic flea markets and things like that. I have actually written letters to horror conventions, and they they’ve stopped it now, but there was one year where there was a guy who was selling a real human skeleton in a coffin.
“And he’d added stuff to it to make you look like a vampire skeleton. And he got a massive neon sign that said real human skeleton turned into a vampire that you could just have in your house.”
As well as ethical issues, the trade poses a danger to public health, Dr Biers said. “It’s dangerous too, because some antiquated human remains they were treated with certain types of pesticides and, and treatments. That’s actually a health and safety risk.
“Like mummified remains. You know, you can have things like spores and mould.”
Last week, Labour MP Ms Ribeiro-Addy put forward a Bill demanding the abhorrent trade is tackled. She told The Mirror: “Most people would be shocked to discover the growing market for human remains. What’s more shocking is the fact that this grotesque trade is currently legal.
“This is despite the fact that most sellers couldn’t tell you where the body parts they are peddling even came from. We urgently need a new law to close this loophole and ban it for good.”
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, says it has strict rules to prevent the sale of human remains. An eBay spokesperson said: “The sale of human body parts, and items containing human body parts, is prohibited on eBay.
‘We work diligently to prevent any items that breach our policies from being listed on the marketplace. This includes using block filter algorithms and specialist teams proactively monitoring the site to remove any prohibited items.”
