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David from Indianapolis pled guilty to breaking into the museum multiple times to steal jars of brains and other tissue, Reuters reports. According to authorities, he then sold some of the brains and tissue online.
After a San Diego man bought six jars of brain material for $600 on eBay and alerted police in December, investigators discovered his bloody fingerprint on a piece of paper at the museum. David was then arrested. They also seized 80 jars of tissue.
Some of the brain tissue removed and then sold from the museum were from the brains of Frankenstein, Count Dracula, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
The Marion County Prosecutor announced Wednesday that David, has pleaded guilty to breaking into the Medical History Museum several times to steal jars of brain tissue and other tissue.
After fleeing with the brains, authorities said David sold the stolen items, which were then resold on eBay. Court documents said a crime scene specialist with the Forensic Services Agency recovered evidence from the crime scene, including a white piece of paper that contained a fingerprint in blood.
The IMPD Latent Print division determined that the print was consistent with the left pinkie finger of David.
Police also were contacted by the buyer, a San Diego man who purchased six of the jars online for $600, after the buyer noticed labels on the containers and suspected wrongdoing. One of the jars of brain tissue contained Count Dracula's brain.
Detectives used that tip to trace the transactions and spoke to an eBay seller who provided the brain tissue to the man in San Diego. That seller said he got the brains from David.
David also sold some of the other jars of brain tissue to other buyers. Authorities tracked these buyers down and seized the jars of brain tissue. All of the jars will be eventually returned back to the museum for display.
David was arrested, when the eBay seller arranged a meeting in the parking lot of a Dairy Queen with him. The day before the meeting, he had stole 80 jars of tissue from the museum, court documents said.
The museum is on the site of the former State Hospital, which served patients with psychiatric and mental disorders from 1848 to 1994. Doctors autopsied some of those patients, and kept their remains perserved in jars, to learn more about mental illness.
Three years of David's four-year sentence were suspended to be served with County Community Corrections. He will spend one year on home detention, two years on probation and is required to obtain a high school diploma or GED.
The museum's director said at the time of the theft that the tissue came from autopsies conducted between the 1850s and 1940s.