Report: Arizona cryogenics facility sued for $1M for cremating man’s body

PHOENIX – A well-known Arizona cryogenics facility is being sued for $1 million for allegedly freezing a member’s head but cremating his body, according to a British newspaper.

The Daily Telegraph reported that Kurt Pilgeram is suing Scottsdale’s Alcor Life Extension Foundation for mishandling his father’s remains.

Alcor is a nonprofit organization that stores deceased patients in a frozen state with the hopes of using future technology to restore them to health.

The foundation’s most famous member is baseball Hall of Famer Ted Williams, who died in 2002. Williams’ head and body are stored separately at the facility off Hayden Road near the Scottsdale Industrial Airpark.

In the lawsuit, the Telegraph reported, Pilgeram said his father wanted his entire body preserved by Alcor, but the foundation sent him a package containing the cremation remains of Dr. Laurence Pilgeram’s body.

Kurt Pilgeram was “shocked, horrified and extremely distressed,” according to the Telegraph, that his father’s whole body wasn’t preserved.

Laurence Pilgeram, a scientist who studied the aging process, was 90 when he died of a suspected heart attack on April 10, 2015, in Goleta, California.

According to a blog post on Alcor’s website, he became the foundation’s 135th patient five days later.

The process of getting him to the Scottsdale facility didn’t go smoothly, according to the post:

Despite medical and police personnel aware of his Alcor bracelet, he was taken to the medical examiner’s office in Santa Barbara, as they did not understand Alcor’s process and assumed that the circumstances surrounding his death would pre-empt any possible donation directives. Since this all transpired late on a Friday evening, Alcor was not notified of the incident until the following Monday morning.

The medical examiner released the body to a nearby mortuary, where it was iced and stored until being transported to Scottsdale on Aug. 15, the post said.

Alcor charges a minimum of $200,000 for whole-body preservation or $80,000 for just the brain, according to the membership agreement posted online.

Alcor was founded in California in the 1970s and moved to Scottsdale in 1994. According to a recent blog post, a Las Vegas man became the foundation’s 159th patient in July.

In 2003, Sports Illustrated reported that Alcor had mishandled Williams’ head, cracking it as many as 10 times, allegations the foundation has denied.

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