Arizona Man Shocked to Find Out His Mother's Donated Body Was Strapped to a Chair and Detonated in U.S. Military 'Blast Testing'

The Arizona body donation center where FBI agents discovered a woman's head sewn onto a male body "like Frankenstein" also sold an elderly woman's corpse to the U.S. Army to be blown up in a "blast testing" experiment.

Jim Stauffer donated his mother's body to the Biological Resource Center (BRC) in Maricopa County, Arizona, in 2013 after she died aged 74.

Doris Stauffer suffered from Alzheimer's during the final years of her life. Doctors believed the disease may have mutated, as she did not have the usual Alzheimer's gene, and they hoped to study her brain after her death.

After neurologists said they could not accept the body, Jim Stauffer donated it to the BRC in the hopes her brain could still be used for scientific research.

Several days later, Jim Stauffer received a wooden box containing his mother's ashes. He was never told how his mother's body had been used at the center.

Years later, a Reuters report revealed that her brain was never used for Alzheimer's research. Instead, the body was sold off to the U.S. Army so it could be used as part of an experiment to measure damage caused by roadside bombs.

"She was then supposedly strapped in a chair on some sort of apparatus, and a detonation took place underneath her to basically kind of get an idea of what the human body goes through when a vehicle is hit by an IED," Jim Stauffer told ABC 15.

"There was actually wording on this paperwork about performing this stuff," he added. "Performing these medical tests that may involve explosions, and we said no. We checked the 'no' box on all that."

According to Reuters, at least 20 bodies donated to BRC were sold off to the army for blast experiments without their family's consent. The bodies were sold for around $5,893 each.

The donation center is no longer operating. It was raided in 2014 by the FBI following accusations that it was selling donated bodies for profit. It was during the 2014 raid the agents made several horrific discoveries, including a woman's head sewn onto a male torso, dismembered limbs and heads strewn about and a cooler filled with male genitalia.

BRC's owner, Stephen Gore, pleaded guilty to illegal control of an enterprise in 2015 and is currently serving probation.

Jim Stauffer is one of several people currently suing Gore and BRC. He described how Gore had stolen "a lot more than my mom's body" with his actions.

"Because every time you know you think about her every time there's a memory every time there's a photograph you look at, there's this ugly thing that happened. Just right there staring right out."