Larry Johnson On Mishandling Of Legendary Ted Williams Cadaver: “He was brought in, he was supposed to be a whole body. They were half way through his neck when somebody comes running in to their so called operating room saying hold on, wait a minute, he’s supposed to be a whole body. By the time that had happened it was too late.”
October 11, 2009 – 8:36 pm by Michael Bean
We haven’t heard much about it in the last several years, but following his death in 2002, Ted Williams was transferred to the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona so that his body could be preserved. Though much of it has taken place behind closed doors, what’s transpired since then has been an ugly mess. Larry Johnson, a former executive at Alcor, recently wrote a book called Frozen which talks about the handling of Williams’ body since his death. The contents of the book – at least from what I can surmise having not read the book – are a chilling and disturbing account of many things gone awry. I’ll leave it at that and let Johnson do the rest of the talking. Johnson joined WFAN in New York to talk about the crooked and horrific practices of Alcor where Williams is frozen, his book that tells all about his time at the company and the mistreatment of Williams, and how it was even a mistake that his entire body rather than just his head was frozen in the first place.
On the desecration of Williams’ head by the cryonics firm Alcor:
“They actually moved his head in to a vessel. Obviously a head doesn’t sit upright very well so they used a tuna can at the bottom of his container. They set his head on top of this tuna can to keep it upright. They filled that container with liquid nitrogen. After two or three days of being in there, obviously they pulled Mr. Williams out and the can was stuck to the top of his head. One of the technicians, in order to try to get it off of there, to get it loose, he picked up a monkey wrench, cocked back his arm, swung to hit the tuna can, missed and hit the head. Then he immediately reared back with his arm, swung, hit the tuna can square on, sending it across the room.”
On why the head of Ted Williams was severed from the body in the first place:
“Well what had happened was – when you sign up with this cryonics firm, you’re given two options. You can either have your whole body froze or you can have just your head froze. He was brought in, he was supposed to be a whole body. They were half way through his neck when somebody comes running in to their so called operating room saying hold on, wait a minute, he’s supposed to be a whole body. By the time that had happened it was too late.”
So it’s correct to say that they were severing his head from his body when somebody came running in to say his whole body should be frozen?
“That’s absolutely correct.”
On how the Williams family feels about his book, ‘Frozen’:
“They’re divided. Obviously there’s the one surviving child that’s on the side of, you know, we’re going to freeze Dad. That’s Claudia. She’s not too happy with the book or me. Then there’s the other side of the family – Bobby Jo Ferrell, the oldest daughter, her husband, and the namesake, Ted Williams the nephew, is very pleased that this has come out and is hoping that this is going to being some justification, that some of these people at this facility are going to be held accountable for what they’ve done to this guy.”
On whether he was actually there when he saw Williams’ head on a tuna can:
Oh yes absolutely, I was eye-witness to that.”
On if he has any other questionable behavior from Alcor’s employees on tape:
“Yeah, absolutely. I got them on tape when I started discovering they were doing some questionable practices, one of them was they were actually euthanizing a couple of their members. They put a member that was alive who was a terminal patient but alive, they gave this individual an injection of a paralytic which basically killed the guy. I have that on tape. I have that on audio tape. Audio tape’s actually going to be uploaded to the book’s website today. It’s frozenbook.com. You’ll be able to listen to all the tapes.”
On how Alcor threatened to defrost Williams’ body after payments were not being made by John Henry:
“Absolutely. You’ll be able to hear that tape on that website. It basically said that if John Henry, who’s now passed away, if John Henry doesn’t come up with over $100,000 that they owe, they were going to thaw Ted, they were going to ship Ted Williams back to the family in a frosted cardboard box COD.”
Listen here to Johnson with Boomer and Carton on WFAN in New York
Tags: Alcor, best hitters in MLB history, Boston Red Sox, cyronics, Ted Williams, Ted Williams body damaged, Ted Williams body frozen, WFAN
