‘My boy’s not whole’ after dying in Vegas

David Kihara

Saturday, March 11, 2006 | 7:27 a.m.

Some people may leave their hearts in San Francisco, but Richard Boorman apparently left that and more after his visit to Las Vegas last year.

The 29-year-old British vacationer came to Las Vegas with friends last summer, and died. In what sounds like an Internet urban legend, when his body landed in England, it was missing his heart, liver, lungs and kidneys.

"My boy's not whole. How could they let this happen?" his mother, Denise, was quoted in the British press as saying. "They've stolen his soul. He was complete when he died in America, but they have sent him home as a shell of the son I love."

It sounds like an urban legend worthy of being spread in a massive e-mailing, and it has captivated the British press.

British newspapers have speculated that the organs were harvested. Another report says that a dirty sheet was found stuffed inside the body.

Nevada officials put on a stiff upper lip when discussing the case and deny those claims. But so far no one has been able to say what happened to Boorman's organs.

"When (the body) left Nevada it was intact. Everything was there," said an official at Nevada Funeral Services, which embalmed the body. "It's been a controversy and a mess ever since."

What's clear is this:

Boorman and friends had been partying, and he collapsed and was taken to Desert Springs Hospital on June 28. There, he was declared dead.

The body was then taken to the Clark County coroner's office. An autopsy was performed the next day, finding that Boorman died of acute cocaine and alcohol intoxication.

The coroner's office removed the organs to run tests and then put them in a bag and sent the bag with the body to Nevada Funeral Services.

Nevada Funeral Services denies that it lost the organs. A company official, who refused to be identified, said the company embalmed Boorman and put the organs in a bag with embalming fluid.

"The bag was sewed up back into the body cavity," the official said.

Boorman's body was then taken to Palm Mortuary, which shipped the body to Becton, England.

Once in England, British authorities conducted a second autopsy, which is standard when a citizen dies oversees. They reported that there were no organs in the body.

Clark County Coroner Mike Murphy said his records show the organs went with the body for embalming, and no, he says, there was no sheet stuffed in it.

An official with Nevada Funeral Services wouldn't comment.

In December Murphy filed a complaint on behalf of Boorman's family with the Nevada Funeral Board. The board has the power to revoke the license of an establishment, funeral director or embalmer.

Officials with the Nevada Funeral Board were not available for comment on Friday afternoon.