Fact Check

Was a Nevada Morgue Employee Arrested for Pimping Out Corpses for Sex?

A bizarre story posited that a Nevada morgue employee found an inventive way to combine two prominent business areas: death and sex.

Published July 17, 2018

 (Photographee.eu / Shutterstock)
Image Via Photographee.eu / Shutterstock
Claim:
A Nevada morgue employee was arrested for operating a cadaver brothel.

On 13 July 2018, the entertainment website World News Daily Report (WNDR) published an article about a Nevada morgue employee named James Whitaker who was supposedly arrested for operating a "cadaver brothel":

A morgue employee from the City of Sins was arrested this morning, for letting visitors have sex with the bodies under his care in exchange for money.

According to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, 36-year old James Whitaker pushed the motto “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” to a whole new level, by operating a cadaver brothel for more than 2 years.

Mr. Whitaker met his customers through a private internet site on which he advertised the corpses readily available at the Clark County Coroner’s office, where he worked the night shift as a medical examiner.

This story was not a genuine news report, but rather another fabricated item from World News Daily Report, a junk news web site with a long history of publishing puerile stories — including several involving morticians, corpses, genitalia, and sex acts.

The site carries a disclaimer stating that its content "is for information and entertainment purposes only."

Although the reports published by WNDR are entirely fictitious, the site frequently includes genuine (albeit unrelated) mugshots of criminals and photographs of law enforcement in its articles. In this case, the article featured the mugshot of Lester Mullet, one of 7 men who were charged with a hate crime in 2011 for forcibly cutting the beards off Amish men in Ohio:

Seven Amish men have been charged with hate crimes for cutting the beards and hair of Amish men in a different religious sect.

The men, all family members of bishop Samuel Mullet, Sr., allegedly forcibly restrained multiple Amish men and cut their beards and hair with scissors and battery powered clippers, injuring the men and others who tried to stop the attacks, according to a statement by the Department of Justice.

The attacks grew out of a religious feud between Mullet and the wider church, according to the criminal complaint against the Mullet family.

Johnny Mullet, Lester Mullet, Eli Miller, Daniel Mullet, and Levi Miller all confessed their involvement in the crimes to the FBI.

The suspects are charged with conspiring to violate the Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

Sources

Curry, Colleen.   "Seven Amish Men Charged with Hate Crimes for Beard Cutting."     ABC News.   23 November 2011.

Escobedo, Tricia.   "Photo Shows Amish Beard-Cutting Attack, Prosecutors Say."     CNN.   30 August 2012.

World News Daily Report.   "Nevada: Morgue Employee Arrested for Pimping Out Corpses for Sex."     13 July 2018.

Dan Evon is a former writer for Snopes.