Kentucky man decorated his bed, apartment with skulls from Harvard Medical School morgue, feds say

FBI agents investigating the sale of body parts from the Harvard Medical School went to William Nott's Mt. Washington, KY apartment to look for human remains, but arrested him because of all the guns, gun parts and ammunition they also found - which they say Nott wasn't supposed to have since he'd already been convicted for assembling a collection of parts to make pipe bombs, court documents say.

It's the latest twist in the saga of how parts from bodies donated to Harvard wound up across the country, sold to collectors with a passion for dead people's parts.

According to an affidavit by an FBI agent, investigators turned their attention to Nott while investigating Jeremy Pauley of Enola, PA, whom they had identified as a key player in a ring that involved Harvard Medical School mortuary director Cedric Lodge. Both Pauley and Lodge were arrested last month along with the owner of a creepy-stuff store in Peabody and others.

After East Pennsboro Township Police Department raided Pauley's house in June, 2022, - finding, among other items, human skin - the FBI got a warrant for his Facebook account and found messages from "William Burke." Burke was an Edinburgh man who, with a friend who owned a lodging house, murdered as many as 16 of its residents to sell their bodies to a doctor who needed them for his anatomy lessons, at a time when Scottish law limited whose bodies could be diverted from graves.

It turned out that Nott was selling parts himself to Pauley, and the FBI was able to use Nott's e-mail address - which included his real name - by subpoenaing records from Paypal, which Pauley was using to pay him, according to the affidavit - which features a photo of a skull and some other human bone Nott put up for sale.

On July 11 of this year, local police and the FBI, armed with a search warrant, entered Nott's apartment in a low-rise apartment complex.

Upon arrival to execute the lawful search, an FBI agent asked NOTT if anyone else was inside the residence. NOTT responded, "only my dead friends."

The affidavit continues:

In the course of the lawful search of the Residence, FBI agents located human remains including approximately 40 human skulls, spinal cords, femurs, and hip bones. The skulls were decorated around the furniture. One skull had a head scarf around it. One skull was located on the mattress where NOTT slept. A Harvard Medical School bag was found inside the Residence.

The officers and agents also found an AK-47 with a loaded magazine, ammunition and a loaded .38 revolver, and, in Nott's Chevy Colorado, a crate with AK-47 parts, ten loaded AK-47 magazines, seven empty AK-47 magazines and a drum magazine and ammunition, the affidavit states, adding they also found inert grenades and two body-armor plates.

Nott was then arrested as a felon in possession of firearms. In 2011, he pleaded guilty to possession of an unregistered destructive device and possession of a firearm by a marijuana user and sentenced to 30 months in federal prison after he was found with a variety of items, that could be used to build pipe bombs, along with a rifled and 19 magazines each loaded with 20 bullets and admitted he was a regular pot smoker, according to the affidavit.

At a hearing last week, a federal judge in Kentucky ordered Nott held without bail.

Since news of the parts sales broke, families of several people who had willed their bodies to Harvard have sued.

Innocent, etc.

Photo via Oldham County Jail.