Chilling ‘bone room’ hiding gruesome remains from multiple bodies found in office after fluid seen seeping under door
A NURSE made the gruesome discovery of a room filled with human remains after she saw fluid leaking from under a door.
The worker stumbled across the “bone room” inside a Melbourne, Australia, health agency building.
A nurse educator noticed the mysterious fluid seeping into the hallway from an abandoned room at Eastern Health’s administrative building on February 14, Melbourne’s Coroners Court heard on Thursday.
When she entered the room, she was left horrified at what she discovered.
Bone and tissue fragments from unknown people were being stored in containers and bins so the woman quickly reported the grisly incident to infection prevention and control officers at Monash Medical School.
But just two days later, an ear nose and throat (ENT) surgeon entered the room and stumbled across a suspicious orange bucket in a fridge.
The bucket contained more human bones which were swimming in the common preservative, formaldehyde.
The nightmare “bone room” was later reported to the Coroners Court on February 27 who then contacted police to inform them of the creepy remains.
Lauren Bedggood, the counsel assisting the coroner, said: “They attended the bone room and found that the scene had been cleaned and the remains placed within yellow hazardous waste bins.
“A plastic bag containing unknown identified material was also located within the freezer section of the fridge.”
The remains were then sent off for forensic testing after being photographed.
According to Eastern Health, the ghastly room was set up by the ENT clinical director in 2008 where it was used by medical trainees who studied the body parts.
But there are no records that prove the room was used for teaching or about where the remains came from.
Eastern Health claimed they bought the remains from the University of Melbourne in 2014, but according to Bedggood, the university has no record of this transaction.
Coroner Paul Lawrie is carrying out the investigation into whether the body parts can be classified as reported death or deaths.
“Ordinarily this starts with the identity of the deceased, but here we have remains, and understand that they are remains from a number of individuals … and all are unidentified,” he said.
Despite the forensic testing, Lawrie confirmed that the investigation has not yet indicated who the remains belong to or where they originated from.
Eastern Health has now brought in a third party investigator to examine the situation and recommend potential in-house changes to the company’s policies and processes.
The health agency’s lawyer Karen Cusack said they had resorted to interviewing current and former staff to try and identify where the remains came from as there are currently no other records.
“The search for the records has turned up nothing,” she said.
“We’re hoping perhaps some of the former staff may be able to point to some other records, there might be some personal records that have been kept.”
Cusack said the company is yet to take a statement from its ex director of head and neck surgery Sherryl Wagstaff.
“The current chief medical officer believes that Sherryl Wagstaff might have a lot more information,” she said.
“I believe there was some differences of opinion when she left Eastern Health.”