KMAX: News of the West

FRENCH VALLEY, Calif. (AP) A crematorium owner who removed heads, knees, spines and other body parts from dozens of corpses scheduled for cremation and sold the parts for medical research was sentenced to 20 years in prison, authorities said.

Riverside County Superior Court Judge Rodney Walker sentenced Michael Francis Brown to the maximum punishment Friday under a plea bargain the 44-year-old Murrieta man made with prosecutors.

``By failing to recognize the humanity of the human remains he came in contact with, by failing to recognize the humanity of the husbands and wives and brothers and sisters who brought their loved ones to him ... Mr. Brown demonstrated his own humanity had somewhere gone awry,'' Walker said.

As part of his plea bargain, Brown, the former owner of Pacific Care Crematorium in Lake Elsinore, pleaded guilty to 66 counts of embezzlement and mutilating grave remains. Originally, 281 counts were filed against him.

Prosecutors said that between 2000 and 2001 Brown removed body parts from bodies intended for cremation, selling the parts to medical research companies through his business, Biotech Anatomical. He earned at least $435,000 from the sales, said Deputy District Attorney Karen Gorham.

Victims attended Friday's sentencing and described gruesome visions of their loved one's bodies being dismembered.

Regina Walsh of Hemet wrote in a statement read in court that parts from her husband's body were found in the crematorium's freezer.

``I was asked to identify my husband's severed head,'' wrote Walsh. ``You will never know how horrid an experience that was for me. Mr. Brown had no right to dissect my husband's body for his own greed.''

Brown's attorney, Richard Layon, who said he was stunned by the sentence, had asked the judge to give Brown probation or a sentence of two years and eight months in prison.

Brown was handcuffed and led from court after the judge denied his request to remain free for two weeks.

Also on Friday, Daniel Schonberger, a driver at the crematorium, pleaded guilty to unlawfully mutilating a body. Crematory operator Jose Terrazas has also pleaded guilty to the same charge and both men face up to one year in jail.