Tel. 760. 583-6700
Email: cryobob@cox.net
EARLY CRYONICS LEADER TO REVEAL TRAGIC STORY
On PRI's This American Life
If you are unfamiliar, cryonics is the science of freezing human beings at the time of their death with the ultimate goal of reanimation when future science and technology will be able to cure whatever the cause of death was. Most people today are at least vaguely familiar with the concept of cryonics.
As the first president of the CSC (California Society of Cryonics), Robert Nelson of Oceanside, California orchestrated the first cryonics preservation of a human being in 1967, when he froze Dr. James Bedford. Shortly after the freezing, Dr. Bedford was shipped in a crate of dry ice to Arizona, where Ed Hope, a wig manufacturer-
Nelson built an underground vault at the Oakwood Memorial Park cemetery in Chatsworth, California and went on to freeze and/or store nine more patients, including a seven year old French Canadian girl and the eight year old son of an Orange County District Attorney. Cloaked in secrecy, two of the three capsules stored in the vault failed, and as a result, seven patients were thawed.
When news of the Chatsworth tragedy eventually got out, Nelson was accused by the media of taking millions of dollars from grieving families and then absconding with the money, leaving the patients to rot. Nelson and the mortician who assisted him, Joseph Klockgether, were later sued by surviving family members of some of the patients. The case went to trial in 1981. Nelson and Klockgether lost the case, and the plaintiffs were awarded nearly one million dollars, mostly in punitive damages.
With the exception of an interview he gave to Mike Perry, a cryonics historian and employee of the Alcor Life Extension foundation, Nelson has remained silent for twenty seven years since the trial. Recently reporter Sam Shaw and producer Robyn Semien of PRI's (Public Radio International)
Robert Nelson and co-author Kenneth Bly have also written a book on the Chatsworth Tragedy called The Ice Nap, and hope to find it a publisher by year's end.
If you would like more information on this topic, or would like to schedule an interview with Robert Nelson, please call him at 760. 583-6700, or email to cryobob@cox.net. Or you can contact Kenneth Bly at cryoken@cox.net.
