Freezing People is (Not) Easy

by Bob Nelson

  “That’s not all. Their lawyer found the Harrington brothers and Marie Brown. They’re suing for breach of contract, fraud, and everything else their lawyers can imagine.”

  This stung. I had thought of the Harrington brothers as friends, and I had helped Marie Brown when Ed Hope intended to throw her father’s capsule into the street.

  “This is all my fault, but don’t worry, Joe. It’ll be annoying as hell, but we’re protected.”

  He answered, “Yeah, yeah,” like he knew that’s what I’d say.

  I was shocked, yet I knew if people could get money by suing, they would sue. Everything we had done was in good faith, with a clear conscience, and protected under the Anatomical Gift Act.

  My friend and attorney, Stella Gramer, assured me that no justifiable legal actions could be taken against me or anyone acting on the society’s behalf. Cryonics organizations throughout the country had long operated under the AGA and still do, just like medical institutions that perform dissections and intentional destruction of donated bodies in their students’ gross anatomy classes.

  That the lawyers put Joseph in their crosshairs was completely unfair. Joseph had donated all of his time to the CSC, but that made no difference.

  I learned that they were looking for me to serve a subpoena. Their strategy was to portray me as a despicable con man with Joseph as my cover and to argue that together we had swindled fortunes from our victims.

  I decided not to make it easy for the sharks to find me, and I was successful for about a year. However, one day a process server somehow got into my high-security apartment building and knocked on my door. I looked through the peephole and did not respond, so he slid the subpoena under the door.

  I didn’t have to accept it, but I needed to end my self-imposed house arrest and deal with the legal farce. The document sickened me. It accused me of every god-awful imaginable thing, including swindling many people out of their life savings. I was ordered to give a deposition; I needed help, but I didn’t have the money for an attorney.

  The plaintiffs’ lawyer, Michael Worthington, revolted me at our first deposition. He wasn’t focused on the complaining party, the Halperts. Even someone as wormy as Worthington realized he wouldn’t have a chance at trial, since we had done nothing for the Halperts, and Joseph had never even heard of them. The lawyer had researched all our patients and found the mother lode with the Harrington brothers, making them the star witnesses. Now he wanted $2.5 million for breach of contract and $10 million in punitive damages.

  I answered hundreds of questions as honestly as I could, but with each impertinent question from that snide man, my stomach just felt more nauseated. All I could focus on was his appearance—skinny, hunched over, and swallowed up by his oversize suit. When the deposition was over, Worthington offered to settle the lawsuit for thirty thousand dollars. That sounded like a good deal, but Joseph’s insurance company refused, saying the whole case was so absurd it would be laughed out of court. Two weeks later I informed Worthington that the insurance company had rejected his offer.

  After returning home from work one night that summer, I caught a report by the Los Angeles CBS affiliate, Channel 2 News, with news anchor Peter Pepper: “A big story is just now breaking in Chatsworth, California, at the Oakwood Memorial Park. A cryonics storage vault containing a huge number of frozen bodies has been abandoned, and all the bodies have been left to rot in an abandoned, filthy, snake-riddled and fly-infested burial vault. The president, Robert Nelson, has absconded with a large fortune meant to care for the perpetual maintenance of the frozen bodies. Nelson is nowhere to be found.”

  I almost fell off my chair, dumbfounded at this slanderous story. I had never felt so naked and exposed. I worried about my kids; they wouldn’t believe it, but they’d have to deal with questions and taunts from their classmates.

  I grabbed the phone and called Channel 2 News. I told them who I was and demanded to speak to Pepper. After about a ten-minute wait, he came on the line.

  “Are you stupid or just nuts?” I asked. I was in no mood to be subtle or polite. “Where the hell did you get that disgustingly untrue story, and why in the world did you not check into the truth of it first?”

  Unabashed and with no apparent concern for journalistic ethics, he replied that he went to the facility, broke the lock, and looked inside with his cameras.

  “You broke the lock?” I asked, amazed he’d so casually admit to a crime. “And what did you find?”

  “Well I, I, don’t really know. It looked pretty messy down there!”

  I sat there stunned. How could a guy like this Pepper be a news anchor where he could influence millions? “If you’re going to run a story, why don’t you first listen to the truth?”

  “Okay,” he said. “When can you be here? Can I interview you about that cryonics vault?”

  His offer calmed me down a bit. Hoping I could fix this right now, I said, “I’ll come this very moment.”

  We agreed to meet at two o’clock the next day at the CBS studio in the San Fernando Valley. Exactly at two, I stormed into the studio to rebut their story and to remind Peter Pepper that CBS had committed a felony by breaking and entering a consecrated burial vault. A gorgeous intern ushered me into a large conference room.

  Five minutes later Peter Pepper came in, shook my hand, and commented, “I must say I was surprised you’d want an interview. Do you mind if we record you?” Two cameramen entered the room behind him.

  I shrugged. “Not at all; I have nothing to hide. As long as you proceed truthfully, I will answer honestly as well.”

  He gave his opening bit and then turned the camera on me. I began with, “Peter, you got it all wrong. Why were you so devious—breaking into the CSC storage vault and pointing your cameras looking for something? Why didn’t you simply discuss it with me, the president of CSC, before you took this illegal action?”

  Yes, I was really ex-president by then, but people on the outside knew me as president, so I let it go at that.

  Ignoring my charge that he had committed a felony when he broke into our cryonics vault, he responded by asking me another question: “What happened to the enormous trust fund that these patients left you to provide for their perpetual care and preservation?”

  “There is no such fund.” I banged my fist on the table for emphasis. “Most of them were penniless; no one had a trust fund. Those are lies. When you were at the vault, did your cameraman focus in on some flies that were aboveground, trying to insinuate there were flies inside the vault? Flies could not live inside the vault. Why would you fabricate such a story?”

  Pepper looked back at his cameramen and glowered when he saw one smirking. He was used to people fawning over him, not scolding him. He responded by asking me another question: “Where are the hundreds of thousands of dollars that are missing from these people’s trust funds?”

  “There is no missing money and certainly not hundreds of thousands of dollars.” I explained that we had run out of money and could not continue to service the cryogenic capsules without funds. All my years of TV interviews served me well; I could appear calm and look respectable on camera. Pepper paused to smooth his hair and to check his teeth and his suit. Finally satisfied, he continued, “So your organization ran out of money. Did you sometimes rob Peter to pay Paul?”

  I responded, “I guess there were times that you could say that.”

  “Ah ha,” he said. “So the question becomes who was ‘Peter’ and who was ‘Paul’?”

  I shrugged. “I just did what was necessary to give all my patients a chance to continue on. I spent years fighting for them.”

  Pepper grimaced and thumped his pencil, disappointed that the story did not have the teeth he wanted.

  As I walked out of the CBS studio that afternoon, I discovered the source of the story. Worthington was hiding behind the exit door, and as I left the buildi
ng, he popped out and handed me another subpoena, which Pepper’s cameras caught on film. In reality, Worthington could not serve me a subpoena; he was the plaintiffs’ attorney of record, and I had already been served. This was a dummy, serving only for news drama.

  I ripped up the phony subpoena as soon as I left the building and was able to breathe fresh air. Worthington! I spat out his name. Of course he had engineered the news story. I wanted to boil and butter that snake.

  This so-called breaking story was on the news again that night. My “Peter and Paul” statement and the arranged confrontation with Worthington were broadcast, but that was all. Pepper reported that research was ongoing and he would have more at a later date.

  Disgusted at Peter Pepper, I called him the next day and said, “Do you realize Worthington made a fool out of you? He used you and he used your news station just to gain publicity for his deep-pockets trial case.” I reiterated, “CSC had frozen most of the patients free of charge. Out of the kindness of our hearts, we were trying to get these people into long-term storage.”

  “How much money did you get to save these frozen bodies of people you have never met?”

  “CSC didn’t get money, and we had to end the vault; that’s the story!”

  Pepper had two more questions: “First, how much money did you collect from society members for the maintenance of these frozen patients?”

  I answered, “On my soul, not a penny ever from anyone.”

  “Second,” he asked, “what can you tell me about the lawsuit?”

  I said, “We have a mortician who often assisted with our cryonics patients. He has malpractice insurance—in other words, deep pockets that Worthington wants to pillage.”

  After that phone conversation, Channel 2 News never again mentioned this sordid fabrication. The cemetery owner, Frank Enderle, considered filing both criminal and civil action against the news station for breaking, entering, and trespassing. Because a crippling stroke rendered him unable to walk or speak, the CBS affiliate managed to avoid legal action.

  The next few months were a nightmare of expense and confusion. After the Channel 2 News farce, the plaintiffs’ attorney, Worthington, inundated me with hundreds of hours of interrogatories, all of which required an attorney.

  The pressure continued when a journalist wrote an article about Chatsworth claiming that “the stench near the crypt is disarming, strips away all defenses, spins the stomach into a thousand dizzying somersaults.” This was untrue of course. The bodies were placed in sealed containers, wrapped, and intact.

  I was tempted to not appear. I would’ve then lost by default and could simply bankrupt away the judgment. However, I couldn’t desert Joseph Klockgether. This money-grabbing scam was an assault not only against me but also against cryonics. Somehow I had to stand by Joseph and fight for justice. I needed a good, but cheap, attorney.

  I called the Orange County Legal Aid Society, and they gave me an address and an appointment. When I arrived for my free fifteen-minute consultation, there were twenty other poor people in the waiting room who needed help for their problems. I brought a thirty-pound box filled with years of cryonics documents, Worthington’s interrogatories, records, and related evidence. Where the hell could I begin this insane story, with only fifteen minutes to explain everything?

  Finally I was called into this tiny cubicle with no room for my box, so the attorney asked me to simply tell him my problem, no records. I began talking ninety miles an hour: “I froze the first man and people started dying, they didn’t have any money but I froze them anyway, then the capsules kept failing, then . . . ”

  By this point, I couldn’t understand myself! But I forged ahead. “This little girl I fell in love with, I mean I didn’t really fall in love, I just loved her like a daughter. She died and the family didn’t have any money but I froze her. I couldn’t help myself; she was such a sweetheart. I . . . I . . . I . . . ”

  “Wait a minute,” said the questioner; his name was Winterbotham. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Cryonics. I’m the ex-president of the Cryonics Society,” I explained.

  “You mean the organization that puts people in suspended animation?”

  Hearing him say suspended animation gave me my first glimmer of hope. “Yes,” I said. “That’s me. I’m being sued. Can you help me?”

  He reached into his pocket, took out his card, and gave it to me. “Call me tomorrow after 10:00 a.m.” That was against the rules, as he was only supposed to dispense brief legal advice, but he was interested in my story.

  I called at ten sharp and made an appointment to meet at his home at 2:00 p.m. We talked for more than four hours, and he reviewed countless documents. This man seemed like the perfect person to combat the sneaky Worthington. He was intelligent and charismatic, and he had a genuine smile. I knew he’d convince a jury to see the truth.

  “This case is the most ridiculous effort to extract money from an insurance company I’ve ever heard,” he said. “There’s no doubt we’ll win the case. I’ll just need fifteen thousand dollars to get started.”

  I accepted and turned over a ton of overdue interrogatories. I gave him a postdated check for three thousand dollars and promised to have the remaining twelve thousand paid within thirty days.

  Attorney Winterbotham declared that, with the signed Anatomical Gift Act documents, we could not lose. Although we had all the signed documentation showing donation of body and funds, the Harrington brothers claimed we had made a verbal contract that I would provide a twenty-thousand-dollar MVE capsule and that I would replace the liquid nitrogen forever. That was ludicrous, stupid, and, well, creative fibbing. The truth was, as I explained, they had said that ten thousand dollars was all they could afford. And the brothers had never made one donation toward their mother’s liquid nitrogen cost.

  I will always remember his parting words that day: “The fraud is being perpetrated against Mr. Klockgether and you, not the other way around.”

  So now I had a clever attorney who was skilled at preparing a case. All I had to do was come up with another twelve thousand dollars. There was only one way—I had to sell my beloved Porsche Speedster. It was twenty-five years old and the last thing in the world I owned of any value. I had held on to the Porsche through all the hardship, sacrifice, and lean years. During those times, I think I knew in my gut to hang on to the car because I would need that money in my darkest hour. That moment had now come. I had given my word to fight this witch hunt to the end, so that’s what I was going to do.

  Chapter 15

  The Trial2*

  As the trial began, Winterbotham and I agreed to alternate driving into Los Angeles each day. This would give us an hour each way to dissect the day’s proceedings. He had no set strategy; he planned to refute their lies with the truth. He couldn’t understand how their case could prevail once we introduced the Anatomical Gift Act. That sounded wonderful, and it would likely end the argument. I felt confident, mostly.

  * This chapter, which deals with the cryonics trial of 1981, is a reconstruction from my memory of the proceedings and is not offered as verbatim testimony.

  That first day we arrived at the courthouse on a crisp April morning, it was a circus. Cameramen and reporters shouted questions such as, “How many millions did you rip off, Mr. Nelson?” “Did you ever really freeze anyone?”

  Holding my head high, I ignored them and strolled up the concrete steps. I had seen comparable dramas with other defendants play out on television, including my stepfather, Big John. The courtroom loomed before me. I always had needed to be in control, and it was scary to realize I had ceded my fate to the judge, jury, and my lawyer.

  “All rise.” The bailiff’s voice commanded silence, and everyone was settled.

  The jury box was on the extreme left of the courtroom, opposite a bank of windows and an evidence table that spanned th
e length of the courtroom. Klockgether, our attorneys, and I sat on the right side of the aisle, farthest from the jury. From the statue of Blind Justice to the imposing mahogany throne for the judge, everything seemed so grand and imperious. Judge Shelby was big too; the zipper on his black robe was battling with his roly-poly belly. With his girth and white beard, I hoped he’d begin court by saying “Ho, ho, ho” and offer to bring me a “not guilty” verdict for Christmas. When the court session began, the jury selection was a tug-of-war between the plaintiffs and us. They wanted older, conservative people; we wanted the fresh-faced young folks and no grumps.

  My first surprise was Thomas Nothern, newly installed cocounsel to the plaintiff, and I realized my case had just become a lot harder. I had envisioned the slimy, devious Worthington repulsing the jury. In contrast, Nothern was so charming he seemed destined for a courtroom. He was a slight man with a severely deformed left leg, so he walked with crutches. He was good-looking and soft-spoken, and with his light Southern drawl, he appeared a kind and friendly gentleman.

  As Nothern approached the jury box for his opening statement, he introduced Worthington, the Harrington brothers, and their witnesses. Nothern then explained to the jury how his clients had been duped and defrauded out of thirty-five thousand dollars. He told them that I had come to Des Moines, Iowa, and froze their mother, shipped her to California, put her in temporary dry-ice storage, and then stole their ten thousand dollars, which they said was their mother’s entire bequest.

  The Harringtons claimed that I promised to provide their mom with a new twenty-thousand-dollar MVE capsule and that I would pay for the liquid nitrogen until their mother could be brought back to life. No matter how long it took! Although they acknowledged they had given only ten thousand dollars to CSC, they wanted an additional fifteen thousand dollars, which they had supposedly spent for her memorial service two years after she had died.