The Mutter Museum in Philadelphia received an anonymous package with no return address Tuesday. Inside were two bottles containing a pair of dead, possibly human fetuses.
The museum, part of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, is dedicated to medical history and has a collection of human skeletons, fetuses, organs and remains showcasing rare medical maladies.
A letter was inside the package, written by an anonymous person.
“They just identified themselves as a retired physician. There were two bottles with fluid, and inside that there appeared to be two very small fetal remains,” Anna Dhody, the curator of the museum, told Philadelphia CBS affiliate KYW-TV.
The Philadelphia Police Department is investigating the donation. The purported fetal specimens were turned over to the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office, police told local ABC station WPVI-TV.
While museum officials believe the fetuses to be human, the medical examiner will ultimately verify whether that is the case.
“To my eye, they appeared to be human, but it will be up to the medical examiners to make that ultimate determination,” Ms. Dhody told local news website PhillyVoice.
She also told The Philadelphia Inquirer, “There was no documentation regarding the specimens, there was no information about the mother or anything, or how the specimens came to be in the possession of the sender.”
The absence of identification means that, by museum policy, the fetuses can’t be accepted.
“I have been here for almost 20 years and I have never received human remains anonymously in the mail. This was definitely out of the ordinary,” Ms. Dhody told NBC’s WCAU.