An Unexpected Find

I found this story listed on a couple of blogs that I read, and was through the AP. Check it out! It is an amazing case of things that happen a lot here in the U.S. that people never realize. This one just happen to go to Auction.

Human skeleton in Ind. sells at auction for $500
The Associated Press
Published: October 1, 2008

TIPTON, Ind.: Richards' Auction Gallery had one interesting item up for sale this week just in time for Halloween: A real human skeleton.

The bones, wired together to keep them in place, were sold for $500 Tuesday. The winner bidder agreed to donate the skeleton to a forensics center for research.

Auctioneer Tim Richards found the skeleton among furniture and boxed items he collected from New Castle for the auction. The bones had apparently been someone's macabre decoration.

"'You won't believe what I found,'" Anita Mattingly, his fiancee, said he told her.

Simmons concluded the skeleton was that of a European man who was between 5-foot-3 and 5-foot-5. Simmons told Mattingly the man died sometime before World War I and was not murdered.

Simmons suggested that the skeleton be donated to research instead of being used for a Halloween prop, but Richards already had advertised that it would be sold.

Jane Harper then made the purchase and donated it to the forensics laboratory at the University of Indianapolis.

"I just felt very strongly this person needed to be in a final resting place," Harper said.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/10/01/america/ODD-Skeleton-Sale.php