Early Cryonics Leader To Reveal Tragic Story On PRI's This American Life

April 16, 2008 - PRLog -- Contact: Robert Buccelli       
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-turned-cryonics capsule manufacturer, stored the body in one of his capsules filled with liquid nitrogen. The freezing generated a good deal of publicity. The following year Nelson released We Froze the First Man, a book (Dell) detailing the formation of the CSC and the freezing of Dr. Bedford.

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) hit show This American Life, conducted an investigation of the events leading up to the trial, including over twenty hours of taped interviews with Nelson. The tragic and incredibly compelling story is set to air nationally at various times between April 18th and April 20th. Here is a link to This American Life’s web site: http://www.thislife.org/. Using the Station Locater on the right side of the page, you can locate what stations in your area carry the program.

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.