Body parts, a $10K heist and a serial-killer novel
Tale of man accused of dumping skulls, limbs across Ariz.
PRESCOTT – The man arrested on suspicion of scattering limbs and skulls across the hills of northern Arizona before Christmas was respected across the country as a champion of donating bodies to science.
But lesser known was Walter Mitchell’s personal and criminal past.
Before he gained prominence in the tissue industry, he had stolen thousands of dollars from an employer and fled to Mexico. He told law enforcement officers he suffered from severe emotional problems that caused him to act impulsively. And he wrote a novel about a serial killer who disposes of victims through a body-donation company similar to the one Mitchell ran before he was arrested.
Mitchell’s background, culled from interviews and public records, adds a chilling twist to an already gruesome crime.
The Yavapai County Sheriff ’s Office is treating the case as a murder investigation, following normal protocol, although there have been no clues to indicate a killer, spokesman Chris Wilson said.
Investigators are reviewing DNA and other evidence, which could take months and lead to additional charges, he said.
“At this current time there is no evidence presented to indicate any of the human remains were homicide victims,” Wilson said. “But in general, we treat all investigations involving human remains as if it were a homicide . ... This is very much an active investigation – and we are still very early in this process so there could be additional charges once we get all the evidence processed.”
Pink, orange and green tape fluttered on the branches of scrub oak bushes one recent afternoon at one of the two crime scenes, marking areas searched after a hunter alerted authorities to a skull in late December.
Fresh footprints and tire tracks on the state trust land near Williamson Valley and Camp Wood roads indicated recent human and animal visitors.
Here, deputies say they unearthed three buried human heads along with two skulls above ground, an unknown part in coyote feces, blue and white gauze and medical absorbent pads.
Yellow police tape at the second crime scene, near Iron Springs and Contreras roads in the Prescott National Forest, had been taken down and tied around a snowman like a scarf. A family nearby hunted javelina. The Sheriff ’s Office had logged at this site in December two dozen body parts, including legs, arms, feet and knees, in addition to gauze and pads, after a tip from a passerby.
It’s unclear why someone seeking to hide remains would choose locations frequented by outdoor enthusiasts, nor why evidence such as metal identification tags and a plastic bag with Mitch
ell’s company name on it were left behind, giving detectives an immediate lead.
Mitchell, 59, may have been familiar with the sites, since public records show he and his parents previously lived in the surrounding area. And he told authorities when he was younger that he had a “self-destructive” streak.
Mitchell faces 29 felony counts of moving, abandoning or concealing dead human body parts, according to Yavapai County Superior Court documents. He has not entered a plea, and his public defender did not return a request for comment. A pre-trial conference is scheduled Feb. 12.
A troubled past, a breaking point
Mitchell’s first encounter with law enforcement appears to have been 1993, when he stole about $10,000 from a McDonald’s near the Grand Canyon, where he had been hired using a falsified job application, Coconino County Superior Court records show.
The 32-year-old took a train to El Paso, Texas, with the money and fled across the border to Mexico, he admitted. A few days later, he tried to sneak back into the United States when he fell ill, he said, but the Border Patrol arrested him with more than $6,000 in cash.
Mitchell blamed his behavior on despair over his family situation.
Born in Illinois, he had grown up the eldest of three, bouncing around the United States and Germany to his father’s Air Force postings, according to court records. His parents eventually settled in the West Valley.
Mitchell attended one year of community college, married at 19, entered the Air Force, was disciplined for disappearing for two days and received an early honorable discharge due to stress, court records show.
By the time of the theft nine years later, he was divorced due to his “mood swings,” had a 6-year-old son from his first marriage and a 3-year-old son from a second relationship, and had cycled through at least 40 jobs, he told the court.
In the week before the crime, Mitchell had fought with his ex-wife over his desire to move to Prescott to go back to school and spend more time with his son, he said. The ex-wife and her husband didn’t want him living so close, Mitchell said.
“It just seemed like my whole world came crashing down on me,” he wrote in a letter to the judge.
Mitchell’s depression had a tendency to lead to “self-destructive” behavior when things got tough, Mitchell told law enforcement. Committing the crime was a relief, he said, because it sent him “into a ‘panic’ mode immediately, which felt better than the depression.”
As proof of his emotional challenges, Mitchell submitted to the court a paper his mother had written when he was a teenager. She said he had trouble concentrating, struggled with self-control and felt “constant anxiety” along with “a strong urge to release it anyway he can.”
Before a doctor diagnosed Mitchell with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, his mother wrote, “I was scared I had a psychopath on my hands.”
Sports like football and basketball, which he excelled at, helped him focus, she said. Apollo High School yearbooks show Mitchell participating in track, cross country and Latin club.
Mitchell expressed remorse for the theft in his letter to the court and requested to attend therapy. The McDonald’s manager asked the judge to sentence Mitchell to community service and counseling, instead of jail time, because he was a “real decent person.”
“If the defendant is able to address his condition, it appears likely that he will return to the law-abiding lifestyle that apparently he lived prior to this offense,” a probation officer wrote in a pre-sentence report.
Mitchell agreed to a plea bargain that dropped his charges to a less serious burglary felony and required him to complete counseling, pay nearly $4,000 in restitution and fees and serve two years of unsupervised probation. He also had to inform employers of the conviction, among other stipulations.
Turning dead bodies into a career
Mitchell had cultivated an interest in medicine and the human body in early adulthood.
One of his jobs was removing tissue and organs from cadavers for emergency transplants, court records show. He hoped to pursue a degree in nursing and enjoyed reading medical journals, he told the court. He took courses from staffers at the Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s Office.
The fascination stuck because, by the time he was 39, Mitchell had helped to found one of Arizona’s first body-donation companies, Science Care, he told a reporter, though the company’s current CEO was unable to confirm for The Arizona Republic that he was involved.
Body-donation businesses, instead of providing organs for transplants in living people, make agreements with those preparing for death to sell parts of their corpses to pharmaceutical firms, medical-device companies, medical schools and other entities for use in research and development. In exchange for the donation, the unused remains typically are cremated and returned to the family at no cost.
Arizona is one of the most popular places in the country for non-transplant human-tissue donors and companies.
Mitchell had links to at least 10 tissue-procurement companies in Arizona, California, Illinois, Oregon and Washington from 2000 to 2020.
According to public records and interviews, Mitchell’s involvement included:
● 2000: Claimed to help found Science Care in Phoenix.
● 2002-2007: Helped found and run BioGift Anatomical in Oregon and Washington.
● 2005-2009: Incorporated and ran National Donor Service in California.
● 2009: Incorporated Reasearch Organ Biologics of California.
● 2010: Worked at Biological Resource Center in Phoenix.
● 2011: Claimed to co-found Innoved Institute in Illinois.
● 2015: Incorporated Amniogift in Scottsdale.
● 2016: Incorporated Microlabs Medical Education in Phoenix.
● 2018: Founded Sannex and FutureGenex in Washington.
Some of the companies are still in business, while others appear defunct.
At least one ran into legal trouble. Biological Resource Center was raided by the FBI and shut down in 2015 for failing to track specimens, screen for diseases such as HIV and store body parts properly. The case gained notoriety for a cooler full of penises that was found.
Public records show that while Mitchell was moving from company to company, he married a second time, purchased a home in Peoria, lost it to foreclosure during the Great Recession and filed for personal bankruptcy in 2010.
Self-published book about a serial killer
Anyone seeking to protect the industry’s reputation might be dismayed by Mitchell’s foray into crime fiction.
His 2012 self-published book, “Serial Killer,” features an Illinois man named Ducky who uses a body-donation company to dispose of victims.
Ducky’s first kill is a college student named Sue. He sexually violates her dead body, then cuts her up and mixes her parts with remains from legitimate body donors destined for cremation.
“No funeral director anywhere would open up a two by two body box full of tissue, blood, and feces to confirm what they were cremating was actually the body parts of the donor,” Ducky explains in the book. “And even if they did, they would find it difficult to confirm the identity of the donor.”
“Getting rid of bodies (was) easy” because of spotty industry regulation, the fictional murderer explains. And cremating the body parts made sure evidence went up in a literal puff of smoke.
The body-donation business provides “an excellent cover for his most beloved game ... killing,” Ducky says in the book.
Mitchell pointed out in the book’s introduction that the tale was made up. But he said he was aiming for realism.
“Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination,” he wrote. “However, I wanted to ensure that the events were plausible.”
Asked if Ducky’s cover-up could be replicated today, Garland Shreves, CEO of Phoenix body-donation company Research For Life, cast doubt.
The paperwork and identification tags required in Arizona and for shipping body parts across state lines would make it difficult to dispose of specimens that were unaccounted for, he said. But there could be higher risk in states with laxer rules, Shreves said.
Trouble before arrest
Before Mitchell’s latest arrest, his personal and professional life seemed on a downward slope.
He opened FutureGenex and Sannex in the Seattle area in 2018, after his second divorce was finalized in Arizona.
Mitchell advertised FutureGenex online as a company that procured donated bodies to further medical education. Sannex offered to ship body parts and surgical tools to medical professionals for hands-on medical training at a cost of $825 to $10,400, according to its website.
In 2019, Mitchell rented space from a funeral home near the Seattle airport where he performed the dissections, according to funeral director Steven Webster. Unused remains went to the funeral home for cremation.
The COVID-19 pandemic hurt Mitchell’s businesses, causing him to move his operations back home, Webster said.
Mitchell planned to pack specimens in dry ice to transport them to Arizona so he could continue his work, Webster said.
Then in December, Seattle-area police came knocking on Webster’s door.
Working with the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office, they had traced the label on the plastic bag left in the woods to FutureGenex.
Webster confirmed for investigators that Mitchell ran a body-donation business and had left in February 2020, court records show.
Deputies learned Mitchell had been living in Chino Valley, outside Prescott, in an RV on someone else’s land.
He kept a large freezer padlocked inside a shed, deputies discovered.
Then on Dec. 19, he sold the RV and freezer and moved into a Scottsdale condo his ex-wife had purchased, according to the sheriff ’s office and public records.
The body parts were found among the hills and brush a week later.
Mitchell was arrested at the condo. His ex-wife put it up for sale in January.
The Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office is processing records and computers that were seized, located the freezer and has sent DNA samples for analysis. The office is working with the FBI and Seattle-area law enforcement to identify the bodies.
“When we identify the remains, we will work on notifying next-of-kin and work with the families to gather more information concerning Mr. Mitchell and confirm whether their loved ones’ remains were donated to Mr. Mitchell and his company,” sheriff spokesman Wilson said.
The episode leaves the funeral director, Webster, shocked and perplexed, he said. “I feel terrible for the families.”
If Mitchell needed help, he could have explained his situation and worked with a funeral home to cremate the remains for $1,000 or less, Webster said, perhaps even free.
Disposing of the remains respectfully was Mitchell’s duty, he said.
“When you see one of the most respected people in the (body-donation) industry do something so stupid and disregarding everything he’s been preaching for so many years, it tells me something in him just broke,” Webster said. “I feel like something must have happened to him after he left Washington to make him just not pause and think about all of this.”
Keeping donors’ trust
The accusations against Mitchell are frustrating to other body-donation entrepreneurs.
Competitors lament that a few bad actors can damage the public’s perception of the industry. They urge people considering body donation to do their research.
Reputable companies earn accreditation from the American Association of Tissue Banks, which bills itself as the gold standard in an industry that is unregulated in many states, Shreves said.
None of the companies Mitchell was associated with currently appear on the association’s list of accredited facilities.
On a recent tour of Research For Life, Shreves detailed the strict protocols families should expect, such as prescreening donors for medical issues that would make their bodies unusable, closely tracking where body parts come from and where they go, carefully vetting end users and properly disposing of remains that aren’t used.
The American Association of Tissue Banks requires accredited companies to obtain donor consent for the method of disposing of tissue, which can include cremation, sending it to a certified biohazardous waste disposal service or burying it consistent with the wishes of the donor or their family, the association told The Republic.
Among the personal touches, Research For Life provides custom wooden boxes to contain a loved one’s ashes and a personalized certificate recording the geographic coordinates where their loved one was released if a family elects for ashes to be spread at sea.
“We believe every donor should be treated with a high level of dignity and respect,” Shreves said. “Every one of the accredited tissue banks in Arizona are doing an outstanding job, and we are operating at a very high level. And the public can trust and have faith that (the American Association of Tissue Banks) does care, and they will yank our accreditation if we don’t do a good job.”