BANGKOK
Body parts discovered in a series of parcels destined for America were claimed by a Thai medical faculty Monday, which said they had been stolen from its museum.
Siriraj Hospital Faculty Dean Udom Kachintorn told the Bangkok Post that the human organs found in a sorting office belonged to them.
Thai post workers were left in shock when they X-rayed and then opened the DHL packages labeled "toys" Saturday. Inside were a baby's head in formaldehyde, parts of a baby's foot, two pieces of tattooed skin and an infant human heart.
Two foreign men who sent the parcels were detained, interrogated, and then set free Sunday, after explaining that they had bought the body parts on a Bangkok night flea market and decided to send them to friends in the United States as a joke.
Chumpol Pumpuang, a deputy chief at the Metropolitan Police Bureau, said Sunday that neither of the men could remember directions to the shop.
The two men are believed to have left the country Monday morning to go to Cambodia.
The Post quoted forensic science doctor Kornkiat Wongpaisarnsin - who had inspected the parts Sunday - as saying that the flesh had been cut and preserved in such a way that it can only have been done by "experts."
The Siriraj faculty dean told the Post Monday that the hospital had not been aware that the items had gone astray as they were owned by different departments - three from the anatomy department and the other two from the forensic science.
He said that the hospital had checked security camera footage during the last month and found one of the two foreigners detained had visited the museum.
Siriraj medical museum is on the banks of the Chao Praya River in central Bangkok.
Among its exhibits are the corpses of mummified serial rapists and child cannibals, jars containing formaldehyde-preserved fetuses and corpses of children with various deformities - usually conjoined.
After autopsy many have been crudely stitched back together.
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