From thawing corpses with a hairdryer to leaking nitrogen-capsule coffins: How a TV repairman made thousands freezing bodies for immortality

From thawing corpses with a hairdryer to leaking nitrogen-capsule coffins: How a TV repairman made thousands freezing bodies for immortality... with disastrous consequences

On a roasting day in California, a former television repairman named Bob Nelson drove his truck into the desert to perform a bizarre funeral ritual. He had left behind four human corpses, crammed into a metal cylinder and stored in a Los Angeles crypt. For months, Nelson had attempted to preserve them in dry ice and liquid nitrogen but his attempts had failed. He was now going to abandon the bodies in the crypt. But first, to salve his conscience, Nelson staged a private ceremony of farewell in the desert He muttered a few words — less in prayer than apology –— and headed back to Los Angeles. Though he was brought up in a Mafia family, Bob Nelson was not a serial killer and these corpses were not evidence of murder. Quite the opposite: the year was 1970 and this was the latest setback in the crackpot quest for immortality known as ‘cryonics’. Nelson did not invent the bizarre fad for deep-freezing people moments after death and storing their bodies for decades, or even centuries, until advances in medical science meant they could be thawed and reanimated. He was not even the strangest of the cranks, charlatans and conmen who promoted this delusion. But he was certainly the most incompetent. Now the story of the search for eternal life is recounted in an intriguing new book, The Price Of Immortality, by Peter Ward. This movement began with a thoroughly unpleasant character called Robert Ettinger, from Atlantic City in New Jersey, who was 13 years old in 1931 when his mind was blown by a series of tales in the sci-fi magazine Amazing Stories. These short stories followed the adventures of a Professor Jameson, who had himself frozen alive and packed into ice before being fired into orbit around the Earth. After 40 million years, he was discovered by aliens who brought him back to life, replaced his internal organs with machinery and made him immortal. Ettinger adored these stories. He grew up to be a physics teacher and an enthusiast for eugenics, the Nazi-style belief that judicious breeding and abortion could improve the human race. And he never forgot Professor Jameson. In 1962 his book The Prospect Of Immortality advocated an end to burials and cremations. Instead, at the moment of death, before lack of oxygen began to cause brain damage, patients could be flash-frozen, to await revival later when whatever illness had killed them had become curable. This became known as the ‘freeze-and-wait’ idea, and it inspired a society of like-minded people, all of whom wanted to live for ever. They called themselves the Immortality Communication Exchange and they were not deterred by passages in Ettinger’s book such as the one titled Mercy Killings. This proposed disposing of newborn babies who appeared so disabled that their existence would place ‘a heavy emotional and financial burden on the other members of the family’. The rest of us, according to Ettinger, could look forward to a glorious future: ‘You and I, the frozen, the resuscitees, will be enlarged and improved, made fit to work, play and perhaps fight, on a grand scale.’ One of those thrilled by the vision was Bob Nelson. Born to an alcoholic single mother in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1937, his stepfather was a 300lb mobster named John ‘Fats’ Buccelli who was shot in the back of the head in his car. Like Ettinger, Nelson grew up obsessed with science fiction. Vwegba Blogging World, bring you serial killer story, serial killers facts, murder, true crime, true crimecommunity, horror, truecrime addict, crime , tedbundy , homicide ,halloween, killer, rodneyalcala, murder on my mind, ,history ,netflixandchill ,deadlymen ,crimewatchdaily ,murderisthenewblack ,historic ,fearthyneighbor ,netflixandcrime ,crime memes ,dark ,murderer ,horrormovies ,insane ,history and many. Feel free to share and comment. Share your thoug