Anthony-Noel Kelly (born 1956) is a British artist who was found guilty of the theft of body parts from the Royal College of Surgeons, which he had used to make moulds for sculptures. He was sentenced to nine months imprisonment in 1998, and the case raised issues of the ethics of art and the legal status of body parts used for medical research.
Between 1991 and 1994 he persuaded a hospital worker to smuggle out the dissected remains of up to 40 bodies from the Royal College of Surgeons [1] [2] Casts of the body parts were used for an exhibition at the London Contemporary Art Fair in 1997. The cadavers were exhibited in a series of casts, painted silver and pinned to a wall, in order to view anatomy "in a historical context" according to Kelly. However, he was arrested soon after and formally charged with stealing human bodies following the discovery of plaster casts of deceased men and women as well as around 30 body parts during police raids at his South London studio and his family's home, Romden Castle in Kent, in April 1997. [3] Kelly was sentenced to nine months in prison. The lab technician who had helped him, Neil Lindsey, received a six-month suspended sentence.
Kelly's guilty verdict was made possible by a landmark ruling by the trial judge, Geoffrey Rivlin QC, that human remains used for medical research could be classed as property, and were therefore stolen in this case. [1] He and Lyndsay were the first people ever to be convicted in England for stealing body parts. [4]
Kelly was later able to reclaim art works confiscated by the police, based on what was described as a "legal technicality". His work was exhibited in 2000 at the Anne Faggionato Gallery, London. [5] [6]
Harold Frederick Shipman, known to acquaintances as Fred Shipman, was an English general practitioner and serial killer. He is considered to be one of the most prolific serial killers in modern history, with an estimated 250 victims. On 31 January 2000, Shipman was found guilty of murdering fifteen patients under his care. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a whole life order. Shipman hanged himself in his cell at HM Prison Wakefield, West Yorkshire, on 13 January 2004, aged 57.
HM Prison Wandsworth is a Category B men's prison at Wandsworth in the London Borough of Wandsworth, South West London, England. It is operated by His Majesty's Prison Service and is one of the largest prisons in the UK.
Body snatching is the illicit removal of corpses from graves, morgues, and other burial sites. Body snatching is distinct from the act of grave robbery as grave robbing does not explicitly involve the removal of the corpse, but rather theft from the burial site itself. The term 'body snatching' most commonly refers to the removal and sale of corpses primarily for the purpose of dissection or anatomy lectures in medical schools. The term was coined primarily in regard to cases in the United Kingdom and United States throughout the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. However, there have been cases of body snatching in many countries, with the first recorded case dating back to 1319 in Bologna, Italy.
Sarah Evelyn Isobel Payne was the victim of a high-profile abduction and murder in West Sussex, England in July 2000.
Grave robbery, tomb robbing, or tomb raiding is the act of uncovering a grave, tomb or crypt to steal commodities. It is usually perpetrated to take and profit from valuable artefacts or personal property. A related act is body snatching, a term denoting the contested or unlawful taking of a body, which can be extended to the unlawful taking of organs alone.
The Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) is a British organisation established in 1983 to protect and represent the interests of its members' intellectual property (IP). FACT also investigates fraud and cybercrime, and provides global due diligence services to support citizenship investment and trade, business, financial and legal compliance.
On 21 March 2002, Amanda Jane "Milly" Dowler, a 13-year-old English schoolgirl, was reported missing by her parents after failing to return home from school and not being seen since walking along Station Avenue in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, that afternoon. Following an extensive search, her remains were discovered in Yateley Heath Woods in Yateley, Hampshire, on 18 September.
Unsolved is a British regional crime documentary television programme produced by Grampian Television that aired in Scotland. The programme aired from 8 January 2004 to 30 November 2006.
Surgeons' Hall in Edinburgh, Scotland, is the headquarters of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCSEd). It houses the Surgeons' Hall Museum, and the library and archive of the RCSEd. The present Surgeons' Hall was designed by William Henry Playfair and completed in 1832, and is a category A listed building.
It is possible to convict someone of murder without the purported victim's body in evidence. However, cases of this type have historically been hard to prove, often forcing the prosecution to rely on circumstantial evidence, and in England there was for centuries a mistaken view that in the absence of a body a killer could not be tried for murder. Developments in forensic science in recent decades have made it more likely that a murder conviction can be obtained even if a body has not been found.
Paul Francis Gadd, better known by his stage name Gary Glitter, is an English former singer who achieved fame and success during the 1970s and 1980s. His career ended after he was convicted of downloading child pornography in 1999. He was also convicted of child sexual abuse in 2006 and a series of sexual offences in 2015.
Jeffrey Howe was a British businessman who was murdered by Stephen T. Marshall.
The history of violence against LGBT people in the United Kingdom is made up of assaults on gay men, lesbians, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex individuals (LGBTQI), legal responses to such violence, and hate crime statistics in the United Kingdom. Those targeted by such violence are perceived to violate heteronormative rules and religious beliefs and contravene perceived protocols of gender and sexual roles. People who are perceived to be LGBTQI may also be targeted.
Events from 2002 in England
Christopher Harold Tappin is a British businessman who is best known for selling weapons parts to Iran in violation of international sanctions and jailed for 33 months in January 2013.
Gemma Rose Veronica McCluskie was an English actress. Her most notable role was in the BBC soap opera EastEnders, in which she played Kerry Skinner between 2000 and 2001.
At some point over the Early May bank holiday weekend in 1998, William and Patricia Wycherley were shot and killed in their home in a suburb of Mansfield, England, by their daughter Susan and her husband, Christopher Edwards. The Edwards then buried the bodies in the garden behind the house and went on to use the Wycherleys' identities to commit various acts of fraud intended to fund their hobby of collecting expensive Hollywood memorabilia.
Acid attacks in the United Kingdom are a form of interpersonal violence where acid or other corrosive fluids are used with the intention of causing harm. London has been called the "acid attack hotspot of the Western world."