Storage Wars Gone Bad

The storm is doing it's thing outside my window and that's likely to continue throughout the night. Overall it's pretty benign so let's talk about something beside the weather, shall we?

Like Storage Wars. If you're not familiar with it, it's a television show in which a band of real-life characters bid on the contents of storage units being auctioned to pay overdue rent on the units. The auctioneer cuts the lock off just before the bidding starts and everyone can look at the contents in the hopes of judging how much to bid but they can't enter. They can't peek in the boxes or move things around either so the bidders are often going on a gut feeling or taking a leap of faith that they'll get back their money they're about to pay. Once the auctioneer hollers Sold! viewers (and the successful bidder) get to see what was in the unit. Sometimes it's a bust and sometimes there's something rare and valuable.

The show takes place in California but auctions just like it happen everywhere. One of Wayne's golfing buddies owns a storage facility right up the road and he's commented that Storage Wars has increased interest in and the sums paid for these delinquent units.

There was an auction at one of the storage facilities in Pensacola just last week. No, I wasn't there to bid but it made the news...because when they opened the boxes in the unit, they were filled with body parts. Hearts. Lungs. Brains. In soda cups and plastic food storage containers, no less. Can you imagine that buyer's reaction when he got into the contents of the unit he just bought? Or the management of the storage facility when he went to the office to report it? Where are the reality TV cameras when you need them!

While the first thought is that we have a mass-murderer in our midst, it turns out there's a semi-logical explanation, albeit a creepy one. The unit was rented by a physician who served for a time as an assistant medical examiner before he was fired several years ago. The news reported that he did private autopsies although I'm having a hard time thinking of many reasons why you'd need a private autopsy as opposed to one required by law but whatever.

Apparently the body parts were "left-overs" from his autopsies. Now whether he needed to retain these specimens for some valid purpose or he didn't want to follow the required steps to legally dispose of them I don't know. Maybe the organs had some interesting abnormality and he wanted to retain them or hoped to sell them to some medical school or something. No one seems to know because they can't get in touch with the doctor. And while the State Attorney's Office is looking into the situation, it seems stashing body parts in a storage unit isn't against any laws.

Call me a skeptic but I've always thought at least some parts of Storage Wars are staged. I mean how entertaining can it be if every unit sold on the show is filled with old clothes and shabby furniture. We'll know if the producers read the headlines when body parts ala Pensacola show up in a unit sold in some future show. They can call it Storage Wars Gone Bad but some would argue reality TV was never "good" to begin with.

Comments

[Jessica Griffin]

Oh gosh Brenda!! I guess I'd better start watching the news a little more often!

[Margot/NZ]

Glad to hear the storm isn't too bad - but that TV show sounds awful! Maybe it needed a warning instead of the storm!

[Jude.x]

Oh, my other half watches that programme.... I bet they don't show that one on the TV!!! Yuk! Wait 'til I tell him about this one. :D
Pleased the storm seems to be by-passing you. Jude.x

[Jan C.]

I was under the impression that body parts were returned to the body after an autopsy! That is really creepy.

[Sarah]

Glad to hear you're surviving the storm. I had heard about the storage unit on MSN yesterday. I work as a funeral director and I occasionally have families request a private autopsy. Often times the cause of death may be obvious - such as a heart attack or stroke - but the family requests one to see if there are any underlying or possible genetic causes.

I had a family in which the father died of a witnessed heart attack. He had been at work when he experienced chest pain and then went into cardiac arrest. Since it was witnessed by co-workers, the coroner ruled it a myocardial infarction and closed the case. THe family requested a private autopsy and it turns out there was a defect with a heart valve and after finding that out, one of his sons was tested and diagnosed with the same condition. If they hadn't requested the private autopsy, the defect would have never been diagnosed in his son.