A Texas mother claims to have lived through a nightmare no parent should ever face: mourning the passing of her son, only to later find his skinned and preserved body being displayed in a Las Vegas museum.
In 2018, 54-year-old Kim Erick came across photographs of the Real Bodies exhibition in Las Vegas. While looking at the images online, she froze. One of the cadavers, posed for public display, struck her with horrifying familiarity.
“I knew it was him,” she said.
Speaking with The Sun, the mother explained she was able to deduce it was her son, Chris, due to three specific details about his body, and accused the exhibition of deliberately obscuring his identity in the process.
“It was so unbelievably painful to look at,” she said.
A Texas mother claims she was lied about her son’s passing, and that his body is now being displayed in a Las Vegas museum
Image credits: Facebook/Kim Erick Smith
“My words cannot describe how this shook me and my family to its core. I was actually looking at pictures of my son’s skinned, butchered body. It is gut-wrenching.”
The mother is now demanding a DNA test.
Kim’s son, Chris, was found lifeless in November 2012 at his grandmother’s home. Officers told her he had passed “peacefully in his sleep” after suffering two heart attacks.
Image credits: Facebook/Kim Erick Smith
Before she could see the body, Chris’ father immediately handled the arrangements. Cremation was authorized quickly; no funeral was held, and Kim received only a necklace containing a vial of ashes said to belong to her son.
For her, that decision was the first red flag.
Image credits: REALBODIESvegas
Kim said the speed of the cremation denied her any chance to verify her son’s remains, and it left her with a growing suspicion that she had not been told the full truth about how he had passed away.
When she pushed for the case to be revisited, authorities eventually sent her photographs of her son at the scene.
“The photos were very disturbing,” she recalled. “There were restraining marks across Chris’s arms, chest and abdomen.”
Image credits: Facebook/Kim Erick Smith
A later review of the original medical documentation, including toxicological findings recorded before cremation, revealed that Chris had a lethal amount of cyanide in his system.
For Kim, this discovery shattered the official version of events. If cyanide was involved, she believed, then Chris had not passed away peacefully at all.
Kim said the specimen had a fracture in the exact same spot where her son had suffered one
Image credits: Facebook/Kim Erick Smith
By 2014, a jury examined the case as part of a formal inquiry, but ultimately concluded there was no evidence of homicide. Authorities closed the file, but for Kim the case was never truly over.
In 2018, Kim discovered the Real Bodies exhibit and began combing through media photos of the preserved corpses. She now claims one of the bodies bore an identical skull fracture to one Chris allegedly had at the time of his passing.
“I started looking online for the deep skull fracture I saw in Chris’s right temple,” she said.
Image credits: REALBODIESvegas
“When I saw the plastinated body online in the news article with this same skull fracture… it was too painful to look closer.”
Not only that, she believed the displayed body had marks that matched tattoos that Chris had, and suspects they were shaved away to conceal his identity.
“Tattoos typically remain on preserved bodies due to ink penetration,” she argued.
While Kim claims to have never physically visited the museum, she said she didn’t need to. The photos were enough.
The organizers replied to Kim’s allegations, stating that the specimens were sourced from China between 2000 and 2004
Image credits: www.facebook.com
The owners of Real Bodies, Imagine Exhibitions, replied to the mother’s claim, categorically rejecting her version of events.
“We extend our sympathy to the family, but there is no factual basis for these allegations,” a formal statement read.
Image credits: REALBODIESvegas
“The referenced specimen has been on continuous display in Las Vegas since 2004 and cannot be associated with the individual named in these claims.”
To further disprove Kim’s claims, the company reaffirmed all bodies used for the exhibition come from China and were acquired decades ago. In their words, the bodies were “ethically sourced and biologically unidentifiable.”
Real Bodies came under fire in 2018 human rights advocates accused it of using the corpses of political prisoners
Image credits: Facebook/Kim Erick Smith
In 2018, an Australian parliamentary case-study verified Imagine Exhibitions’ claims, finding that the cadavers were sourced from a company called Dalian Hoffen Bio‑Technique, and under the supervision of Dr. Hong-Jin Sui.
The bodies were acquired between 2000 and 2004, long before Chris’s passing.
Image credits: Facebook/Kim Erick Smith
The case-study was motivated by claims from a group of lawyers, academics, and human rights campaigners who called on the Australian federal government to shut down the exhibition. They suspected the bodies belonged to executed political prisoners.
Their main argument was that for plastination to be possible, the process must begin within 48 hours of the person passing away.
Image credits: 8 News Now
Plastination involves the removal of the skin and replacement of tissue fluids through the forced vacuum injection of silicon, epoxy, and polyester resin.
For them, this fact contradicted Imagine Exhibitions’ claims that the corpses were all “unclaimed,” as Chinese hospitals keep them for 30 days before declaring them as such.
Despite the organizers’ claims, Kim insists that the museum should allow sampling, and wants the body she suspects to be her son’s to be DNA tested.
“I felt sick.” Netizens were horrified by the implications of the mother’s claims
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