“Despite the claims of collectors, a skull can only belong to its own person, not a museum or any other buyer on the market.”
The Mütter pulls almost 150,000 visitors a year and sells soaps and keychains shaped like its artifacts. Its 139 Hyrtl skulls came from graves attached to hospitals, madhouses and prisons. Arizona pays survivor benefits for one year, then decides grief should stop. The state gives a murdered woman’s son twelve months to mourn, and the museum gives grave-robbed strangers a cherrywood cabinet forever.