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A man who purchased the contents of a storage locker found a batch of crudely preserved human organs inside, including the hearts, brains and lungs of about 100 people.
One heart was reportedly found in a drink cup filled with formaldehyde.
Police in Pensacola, Florida, are still trying to determine the source of the organs, locate the victims' families and figure out why the owner, a former medical examiner, had them.
They are also trying to assess whether any laws were broken in the disposal of the remains.
The locker contents had been traced to the previous renter, Dr Michael Berkland.
Berkland worked at the District 1 office of the Florida Medical Examiner from 1997 until 2003, when he was fired for not completing autopsy reports.
He is also believed to have been performing private autopsies as well. But it is unclear whether the body parts came from those autopsies or from another source. Many of the body parts found were not labelled.
That raises the possibility that relatives might never be notified, or might for ever wonder whether their loved ones' organs were among those found in the locker.
Jeff Martin, director of the medical examiner's office in Pensacola said: "How horrible it is for the families of these deceased to think that someone's loved one's organs are basically rotting away in a storage unit somewhere."
The man who purchased the contents of the locker realised something was amiss when he was hit by a foul smell from inside the storage facility.
Berkland told employees of the storage facility company he planned to keep household goods and office furniture there.
Diane Piegza, of Uncle Bob's Self Storage, said: "We never had any indication that anything was out of the ordinary, nor did anyone on our management team ever notice anything amiss during daily property checks."
Additional reporting by Associated Press


Human organs found in storage locker in Pensacola, Florida

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