Larry Johnson former COO of Alcor Life Extension Foundation, a cryonics facility in Scottsdale, Arizona, called in to talk about the details surrounding the freezing of Red Sox legend Ted William’s head.
Alcor specializes in preserving human heads and bodies in liquid nitrogen, when they “can no longer be supported by ordinary medicine” in hopes that they can be unfrozen in the future and “restored to full health.”
When Ted Williams died in 2002 his son, who is now dead and also frozen at Alcor according to Larry, had Ted’s head stored at the facility.
Larry claims there were a lot of shenanigans going on with Ted’s preservation. Larry said Ted’s entire body was supposed to be frozen, but technicians fucked up and started cutting off his head.
So they continued the “operation” and ended up freezing and storing the body and head separately. Larry did not like the way things were being run, but couldn’t stop it, saying, “Even though I had that title of COO, I certainly didn’t have much authority.”
Larry said heads like Ted’s were removed with a ball-peen hammer and chisel, then frozen in liquid nitrogen with a tuna can stuck to the top of the head to prevent it from sticking to the bottom of the canister. Heads are preserved upside down.
In Ted’s case, Larry saw employees taking “baseball swings” with a monkey wrench to dislodge the can from Ted’s head, which ended up chipping it and leaving a “significant crack.” Larry also claims Alcor staff took pictures with Ted’s frozen head.
He said the incident deeply disturbed him and one day he ended up sitting in his car and crying. That’s why he wore a wire and wrote a book to expose Alcor in hopes that politicians will act to regulate the industry.
Larry also revealed pets are frozen at Alcor, so Howard thought it would be funny to splice Ted’s head with a dog, joking, “Wouldn’t it be weird if they put Ted Williams’s head on a dog’s body.” Artie chimed in and said, “I’d love to see a rottweiler hit .406.”
Alcor tried to put a restraining order on Larry, but it didn’t work because Larry’s book Frozen: A True Story, My Journey into the World of Cryonics, Deception, and Death is on sale now. You can visit Larry’s website for disturbing photos of the Alcor process.
October 7th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
OH crap, just got to the last picture on his site of the head. I wanna know what frikin idiots think that they will be brought back to life after that.
On a related note… Futurama’s heads in jars make more sense to me now.