When Thief Unwraps Spoils It’ll Be A Scream

The thief probably lusted after valuable loot, but all he got was the cold shoulder.

In fact, six cold shoulders.

In the chill of the evening Wednesday, a box with six frozen human shoulders was stolen from a truck about to deliver them to a Phoenix air freight service, police said.

The shoulders, bound for an Illinois research laboratory, were among other boxes of body parts picked up at the nonprofit Anatomic Gift Foundation in Phoenix, and taken to Ches Trucking Co., near Sky Harbor International Airport.

The owner of Ches Trucking said the truck, loaded mostly with shoulders, was left unattended, “for five minutes at the most.”

“When I realized a box was gone, we started looking around the area for it right away,” John Chester said.

The box with the shoulders weighed about 40 pounds, Chester said. He found it in a field within minutes of the theft; the thief had carried it about 300 yards.

But the box was empty.

Williams said the shoulders were wrapped in clear plastic, then cloth, “so it wouldn’t be immediately obvious what was in there.”

But there could be no doubt about the nature of what was in each package, once it was opened, he said.

Chester said that “the thief probably saw just the word ‘perishable’ on the end of the box, thought it was a food product of some value, and ran with it.”

“I hope he didn’t go home and tell his wife he got a bargain somewhere, and then have her open it,” Chester said.

“That could be quite a shock.”