PORTLAND (AP) – A 10th lawsuit has been filed in connection with a now-defunct brain harvesting operation at the Maine medical examiner’s office.

Frank and Peg Kelley of Buzzards Bay, Mass., claim that they agreed to donate tissue from their daughter’s brain after she died in 2000, but that her whole brain was taken. The allegations largely mirror charges made in previous lawsuits.

In the suit, the Kelleys said they got a phone call on Aug. 28, 2000, just hours after 42-year-old Candace Kelley died unexpectedly in Norway, Maine.

The caller, Matthew Cyr, asked for permission to take a small sample of their daughter’s brain tissue for research on depression, according to the lawsuit. Cyr, the state’s one-time funeral inspector, was being paid $1,000 to $2,000 by the Stanley Medical Research Institute of Bethesda, Md. for each brain donation he solicited in Maine.

“Mr. Kelley asked, You’re not going to take any organs out of her body, are you?”‘ the complaint reads. “In response Cyr stated, No, absolutely not, just a small amount of tissue. We wouldn’t do that.”

The suit’s four defendants are Cyr, the Stanley Medical Research Institute, the institute’s founder, and a Bucksport woman who lived with Cyr and purportedly witnessed the Kelleys’ verbal consent when they agreed to donate brain tissue, but not the entire brain.

The harvesting of brains at the state office where autopsies are performed was halted in 2003 after a Gorham couple complained they did not give permission for their late son’s entire brain to be removed.

Federal and state investigators have since opened criminal investigations to determine whether any laws were broken between 1993 and 2003.

The Stanley Institute and its founder, Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, have previously denied wrongdoing. Their lawyer said Tuesday his clients have always acted in good faith.

In court documents filed in response to other lawsuits, Cyr and his associate have denied taking brains without permission.

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Information from: Portland Press Herald, https://www.pressherald.com

AP-ES-06-08-05 1045EDT