Why Ted Williams is frozen in a Scottsdale, Arizona, industrial park
Ted Williams was a baseball savant – a 19-time All-Star, two-time MVP, two-time Triple Crown winner, 6-time batting champion and first ballot Hall of Famer. A Boston Red Sox demigod, Teddy Ballgame compiled a .344 lifetime batting average and hit 521 career home runs. Williams holds the record for career on-base percentage (.482) and, 83 years ago, became the last qualified batter to hit at least .400 in a major league season. All told, The Kid was arguably the greatest hitter who ever lived, and few came closer to disproving the ‘game of failure’ hypothesis on which baseball is built.
Perhaps more importantly, though, Ted Williams was an American hero – an award-winning fighter pilot who lost parts of five seasons to serve in the military during World War II and the Korean War. The Splendid Splinter could have topped other sacred career plateaus – 3,000 hits and 700 home runs – but sacrificed playing time to defend his country. Fittingly, in 1991, Williams was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom – a crowning accolade for one of the most decorated Americans who ever lived.
But for all the acclaim and glory, in his later years, Ted Williams was managed – and some say milked – by cronies and associates, charlatans and hangers-on. The legendary slugger had three children – Claudia, John-Henry and Barbara-Joyce (Bobby-Jo) – all of whom were grown adults as their father receded into octogenarian decline. John-Henry was closest to Ted as his health complications mounted, and many accused the only son of expediting his father’s demise by burdening Ted with questionable business initiatives.
As far back as 1991, in fact, John-Henry became preoccupied with opportunities to monetise his father’s fame. That year, while still a senior in college, John-Henry sold t-shirts commemorating the 50th anniversary of Ted hitting .406. Then, after graduating, he partnered with two Boston businessmen on a series of ventures: Grand Slam Marketing, Major League Memorabilia, and The Ted Williams Card Company. The common mission? Restoring lustre to the family name, flushing the market of forged Ted Williams memorabilia, and – yes – turning a profit from autograph signings and events.
Many applauded John-Henry’s entrepreneurial zeal as sports memorabilia captured the zeitgeist. However, Ted Williams had already been burned by the autograph industry, when Vincent Antonucci, a fleeting business partner, stole $37,800 from The Kid rather than using that money to stock their new memorabilia store in Crystal River, Florida. Therefore, Ted was understandably reticent about returning to the memorabilia game, but he yearned for his only son to taste success, and humoured various chaotic projects as a result.
As chronicled by Leigh Montville in Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero, a pattern soon emerged whereby John-Henry visited his father in Florida, had him sign stacks of assorted tchotchke, then returned east to sell the wares. Early on, most of the profits went to Ted, but John-Henry had bold visions generally devoid of undergirding strategy, and those ambitions torpedoed the entire initiative.
For instance, the Ted Williams Store – hidden inside the byzantine Atrium Mall in Newton, Massachusetts – became a white elephant, and the 1994-95 baseball strike ransacked the memorabilia trade. Reading the tea leaves, John-Henry’s partners pulled out and left him in sole control of a crumbing empire. Desperation set in, and that did not bode well for Ted Williams.
Indeed, Ted’s health entered serious decline in the mid-1990s. A stroke made headlines, then came a broken shoulder from a fall. Still, Ted continued to sign autographs and attend events, often at the behest of John-Henry. In December 1994, the son moved in with his father, domiciled in a large Citrus Hills mansion, ostensibly to look after Ted as his condition worsened. However, as reported by Montville, John-Henry removed minders, secretaries and aides from his father’s inner circle and became the exclusive conduit to Ted’s public life.
Many saw this as an opportunistic power grab by John-Henry, who screened requests for Ted’s time and attention, and denied most out of hand. Old friends could not reach Ted, and there was a sense that John-Henry granted access only to those who could help his own fortunes – a persevere quid pro quo feasting on his father’s mystique.
“From the beginning, he ruled with an air of privileged that the famous man never had,” wrote Montville of John-Henry. “He was not afraid to spend the money earned on Ted Williams’ name. The son bought his own condominium at Black Diamond, the trendiest of the competing developments that had sprung up around Citrus Hills. He drove a BMW 740IL and a 1978 Porsche 930.”
John-Henry was granted power of attorney over Ted in 1996, though Montville and others wrote of blank contracts being signed amid the daily autograph grind. To that end, even a broken hip did not curtail Ted’s inky output, which became central to his daily existence. Indeed, according to Montville, John-Henry even installed cameras around the family home to monitor Ted’s routine and ensure no staffers requested free autographs. John-Henry became furious whenever Ted signed for free – for friends or genuine fans. In repost, Ted became grumpy and bellicose, disenchanted with his late-life malaise, and often lashed out with verbal assaults against his children and carers.
Undoubtedly, the slapdash nature of John-Henry’s commercial efforts imbued stress and worry into Ted’s later years. Further legal wrangles emerged when Upper Deck considered Ted in breach of an autograph exclusivity agreement, while a separate FBI probe focused on the possible theft and sale of rings given to Williams for his participation in two World Series – one as a player; the other as an ambassador – with the Red Sox. In 1997, John-Henry also setup hitter.com, the ‘official website of Ted Williams,’ which offered autographs by mail. There was no let-up for Teddy Ballgame, whose personal wealth seemed to shrink despite a surfeit of schemes peddled by his son.
Those once closest to Ted became concerned by the optics. As such, in 1998, according to the Associated Press, the Florida Department of Children and Families even paid a visit to the Citrus Hills residence to investigate potential abuse of a senior citizen: Ted. A Williams aide raised concerns that Ted was underfed and locked in the house. However, the visiting officials saw nothing to substantiate those claims, and no further action was taken.
Unperturbed, John-Henry pressed ahead with eye-popping expansion plans, entering the dotcom bubble by launching hitter.net, an internet service provider, in 1999. Serving Florida locales neglected by larger carriers, hitter.net actually filled a market need, and its early success led to a $7.5 million offer from a mightier rival, per Montville. Alas, John-Henry did not accept the offer, and hitter.net succumbed to the dotcom crash in August 2000, ransacked by debts of $12.8 million, as reported by the St Petersburg Times.
Before the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, though, it first earned a place in baseball infamy. You see, when Ted Williams appeared at the 1999 All-Star Game, held at Boston’s Fenway Park, he wore an ugly hitter.net cap, rather than that of the Red Sox. As contemporary All-Stars gathered around Ted, wheelchair-bound, the generic corporate logo on his head stuck out like a saw thumb. At that moment, in America’s collective conscience, hitter.net became symbolic of profit-seeking mercenaries leaching an immortal legend. Alarm bells rang from sea to shining sea.
In point of fact, however, and contrary to most retellings, Ted offered to wear the hitter.net cap, according to Montville. He did not want to attend the game at all, despite cajoling by MLB, the Red Sox and John-Henry. It was only when companies came forward with sponsorship opportunities that Ted saw a chance to help his son by donning the hitter.net garb. Indeed, even as Ted waited in a Fenway tunnel to be introduced, a Red Sox cap was on standby, within reach. Williams chose the hitter.net hat instead.
As uncovered by Montville, ever prideful, Ted wanted to pay back hitter.net debts to close personal connections that were quashed during the bankruptcy proceedings. Meanwhile, stooping to a new nadir, and trying to recoup some cash, John-Henry sold a US flag signed by his dad – the great American war hero, no less – on eBay. The winning bid was for $3,050. The shame was forever.
Exacerbated by stress, Ted’s condition worsened, with depression accompanying disorientation. Montville reported that Williams was prescribed Zoloft during that period, while heart problems led to prolonged hospitalisation. A pacemaker was fitted, and Ted endured open-heart surgery. At one point, Montville says, John-Henry even forbade the placing of IVs in Ted’s right arm. Why? So he could still sign autographs.
The mind truly boggles.
* * *
As told by Ben Bradlee Jr. in The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams, while his father was hospitalised in May 2001, John-Henry became engrossed in his next project: profiting from Ted long after his impending death.
According to Bradlee Jr., John-Henry first encountered cryonics – the science of freezing dead bodies in hopes of resurrection upon the discovery of future cures – in 1997, while watching a Discovery Channel documentary. Stoked by science fiction movies, that fascination grew as Ted’s condition worsened, coalescing into active reconnaissance by John-Henry.
Duly interested, the son became connected with the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, a leading cryonics facility based in Scottsdale, Arizona. Founded in 1972 by Fred Chamberlain, a NASA engineer, and his wife, Linda, Alcor aimed to ‘cryopreserve’ dead bodies, or parts thereof, until novel treatments could enable ‘reanimation.’ Nobody knew when that would occur, or even if it could, but Alcor banked on the minuscule odds when compared to the certainty of burial or cremation.
People have long contemplated immortality, of course. Benjamin Franklin daydreamed about being preserved in a vat of Madeira wine so he could see what life was like a few centuries later. In that future, Walt Disney supposedly developed a passing interest in cryonics, though his rumoured freezing after death in 1966 is an urban legend devoid of corroboration.
Nevertheless, and while largely dismissed as pseudoscience, cryopreservation was first applied to human cells in 1954. Freezing whole humans was first proposed by Michigan professor Robert Ettinger in 1962, when he wrote The Prospect of Immortality, a bedrock of cryonics dogma. The first human body was frozen in April 1966, and Alcor performed its first procedure – on Fred Chamberlain’s father – a decade later.
By 2001, when John-Henry came calling, Alcor had 49 ‘patients’ cryopreserved at its Scottsdale facility, per Bradlee Jr. Moreover, the non-profit foundation had more than 600 members – all committed to a frozen fate, all paying $400 per year in dues.
At that time, reported Bradlee Jr., Alcor offered to ‘suspend’ – in essence, to freeze and store – dead bodies for $120,000. Alternatively, ‘neuro’ procedures – the severing and freezing of heads alone – could be arranged for $50,000. What use is a severed head, even if reanimation became possible, one may ask? Well, cryonics gurus argue that, if the technology one day exists to regenerate human life, such advanced capabilities will, as a matter of evolutionary sequencing, necessarily encompass techniques for reattaching heads. That is no biggie, apparently.
Quite how Alcor estimated those fees is unclear. How any business could charge a one-off fixed-fee for the storage of anything, in perpetuity, confounds logic. At what point is the $120,000 lump sum burned by electricity? Keeping refrigerators and freezers running 24/7, forever, cannot be cheap. Oh, and what happens at Alcor during power outages? And what if the foundation ever went bust? And is Alcor doing any research and development on the actual cures that will supposedly unlock human reanimation? One question begets another, and answers are rarely forthcoming.
Regardless, John-Henry quickly converted to cryonics and openly proselytised its virtues. Indeed, according to Montville, John-Henry confided in Bobby-Jo, his half-sister, detailing a nascent fascination with cryonics as it pertained to their father. “We don’t have to take dad’s whole body,” he purportedly said, per Bobby-Jo. “We can just take the head.”
According to Bobb-Jo, via Montville, John-Henry asked Bobby-Jo to visit Alcor with him, where the siblings could watch another procedure. John-Henry had been ‘amazed’ by the facility, but Bobby-Jo instantly demurred, considering it ‘insane,’ and saying it ‘was not going to happen.’ Still, according to Bobby-Jo, John-Henry continued to talk about the possibilities of making money from their father’s DNA – imagining ‘all these little Ted Williamses running around.’
Per Montville, when Bobby-Jo refused to embrace John-Henry’s cryonics plan, she was shut out of Ted’s life. By her own admission, Bobby-Jo never enjoyed an especially close relationship with her father, who could be vile in his verbal denouncements of her, but she fought for access, nevertheless. Lawyers became involved as Bobby-Jo tried to reach her father, who doubled-down on his rejection by removing Bobby-Jo from his will.
Dysfunction reigned supreme, while science fiction lurked in the ether.
* * *
Adding to the absurdity, in June 2002, John-Henry Williams took a break from cryonics to try his hand at professional baseball – despite failing to even make college teams in the past. As ever, Ted pulled some strings, and the Red Sox signed John-Henry to a minor league contract paying $850 per month.
Assigned to the same Gulf Coast League rookie ball team as Jon Lester, Hanley Ramírez and Rich Garcés, the 33-year-old first baseman felt inspired to give professional baseball a shot after watching the tragic events of 9/11 – somewhat bizarrely. “It made me realise I had nothing near and dear to my heart,” John-Henry told reporters. “Nothing was really mine. It motivated me and a lot of other Americans, too.”
Needless to say, most observers ridiculed the move, which looked like a crass publicity stunt. “It’s a total embarrassment,” one ‘high-ranking Red Sox official’ told the Sun Sentinel. “He couldn’t make a good high school team. We let him hit against two of our lower-level Gulf Coast League pitchers, and in 16 at-bats, he only managed five foul balls.”
Ironically, the Red Sox were under new ownership when John-Henry joined the organisation, as a $380 million takeover by New England Sports Ventures had just been ratified. The lead investor of that consortium? John Henry. No, not John-Henry Williams. John W. Henry, a billionaire commodities trader from Illinois. The satire was not lost on most Red Sox fans, and the opportunity to have John-Henry play for John Henry fell right into the schmaltzy wheelhouse of team public relations czar Charles Steinberg.
Regardless, John-Henry made his professional baseball debut on 26 June 2002, in a game against the Gulf Coast Rangers. He went 0-for-3. Then, the very next day, John-Henry broke a rib crashing into the stands while chasing a foul ball. He landed on the injured list, slated for six weeks out of action, and played just one more game in the Red Sox organisation, collecting zero hits.
The Splendid Splinter he was not.
* * *
On 5 July 2002, at 08:49 ET, Theodore Samuel Williams died, aged 83, in the Citrus Memorial Hospital of Inverness, Florida. A cardiac arrest led to complications, and the light went out on one of the most remarkable lives in American history.
According to Montville, John-Henry was at City of Palms Park, hub of the Gulf Coast Red Sox, when he heard the devastating news. From there, he raced 220 miles to the Ocala, Florida, airport, to meet Ted’s body, which was placed aboard a private jet bound for Alcor in Scottsdale, Arizona.
“The science-fiction scenario John-Henry had sketched for Bobby Jo…actually was taking place,” wrote Montville. “His father’s body was going to be drained of fluids, refilled with antifreeze solution, frozen, placed in a refrigerated cylinder in Scottsdale, and left there in the long-shot hope that, generations from now, science would be able to fix and replace the organ and body parts that had failed. Life after death. John-Henry actually was taking a shot at it with his father. With Ted Williams.
“If everything…happened as everyone presumed…Williams’ body would have been treated for four-and-a-half hours in a quasi-operating room at Alcor, 14 people in attendance, then submerged in a tub-like contraption filled with dry ice. The temperature of the body would have been lowered to -76 degrees Celsius, then the body would have been placed, hung, inside a sleeping bag, upside down inside a steel vat called a ‘dewar,’ where it would stay, frozen in a liquid nitrogen environment, until some future day when science would thaw out the various residents and repair the flaws that stopped their breathing and the beating of their hearts.”
Effectively estranged from her father, Bobby-Jo Williams heard of his death from a friend who worked in the hospital – a subterranean backchannel that irked her considerably. “She told me my father died, and they were freezing him and pumping him full of blood thinners,” Bobby-Jo told the Boston Globe on 6 July 2002. “I knew right away what it was. He’s just trying to make money off daddy.”
From there, Bobby-Jo went on the offensive, calling newspapers to report that her father – the great Ted Williams – had been frozen against his will. “In my 53 years, my dad has told me, and anyone that was around him knew, that his wishes were to be cremated,” she explained to the Globe, adding that Ted wanted his ashes scattered across the Florida Keys. “My dad would flip out if he could see what was going on. And he would flip out if his son was going to do that to him.”
Fuelled by Bobby-Jo’s accusations, news of Ted Williams’ potential cryopreservation broke hard and fast, with reports by CNN, NBC and other national outlets. Camera crews beat a path to John-Henry’s door in Citrus Hills, though the son – quickly portrayed as a villain – refused to speak. Yet behind closed doors, as asserted by Montville, John-Henry printed off copies of media reports about the unfolding scandal. Meanwhile, the Boston Herald reported that John-Henry slept in his father’s bed in the days after Ted’s death – a weird wrinkle in a largely unbelievable story.
Alas, Ted Williams, so long revered, became the butt of late-night jokes. David Letterman mentioned the saga in jest, saying a slumping Mike Piazza had scheduled a press conference to announce he was not frozen. Meanwhile, over on NBC, Jay Leno joked that a national heatwave was so intense, people claimed they were relatives of Ted just to have their heads frozen. So long a national treasure, Ted Williams became an awkward punchline.
“During the past couple of years, as Teddy Ballgame battled health crisis after health crisis after health crisis, there had been cruel, whispered jokes that The Kid’s kid, John-Henry Williams, would somehow attach some entrepreneurial enterprise to his father’s death,” wrote Steve Buckley in the Boston Herald. “A pay-per-view funeral, perhaps. Or the old man’s clothing landing on eBay. But this? The horrible spectre of Ted Williams’ head being frozen and mailed to an Arizona-based cryogenics firm? DNA for sale? Would Ted Williams have wanted this?”
Buckley raised an important point about the difference between wilful and forced cryopreservation. Sure, cryonics was largely devoid of scientific validity, and many considered it a fringe bemusement, but if Ted Williams embraced it and wanted to be frozen, that was his prerogative. Yes, it would be highly unconventional and perhaps lamentable, but it would, at least, be consensual. By contrast, the notion that Ted Williams did not want this – that his avaricious son sought to capitalise on his death – raised anger across America. Some felt a national institution had been violated.
“Ted on ice,” wrote Dan Shaughnessy in the Boston Globe on 8 July 2002. “Freeze-dried Ted. The Frozen Splinter. Could this be any worse? Stripped of any chance for a dignified burial or cremation, the body of the greatest hitter who ever lived rests in a cryonic warehouse in Scottsdale, Az. There will be no funeral, no memorial service. And his children soon will be fighting one another in court.”
Indeed, by that point, Bobby-Jo had initiated legal proceedings hoping to free Ted’s body, which she said Alcor possessed. The Ted Williams Last Wish Fund was established to cover anticipated legal costs, and mediation loomed on the horizon. Before that could commence, however, John-Henry and Claudia – who sided with her brother – were due to attend the MLB All-Star Game in Milwaukee, but pulled out at the last possible moment, citing death threats received at their hotel.
Publicly, Alcor refused to confirm or deny the presence of Ted Williams at its Scottsdale facility. “Whether or not an individual is a patient or client, Alcor has a longstanding policy of confidentiality and does not discuss their identities,” said Karla Steen, the firm’s marketing director, in a 9 July statement.
Nevertheless, almost simultaneously, Jerry Lemler, the bombastic CEO, could not help but luxuriate in the newfound spotlight. “Since the weekend, when reporters indicated that Williams’ body was being sent here, the phones have rung incessantly and the Alcor website has been clogged with visitors,” wrote the New York Times, noting Lemler was a lifelong Yankees fan. “This has raised public awareness about cryonics and about Alcor,” said the CEO. “We’re under scrutiny like never before, and we welcome it. We were anxious for so many years to be able to state our philosophies, our goals, our convictions, as well as our prices and our disclaimers.”
Aside from Lemler’s thinly-veiled sales pitch, the first solid clue that Ted Williams was indeed cryopreserved at Alcor came on 12 July 2002, when his death certificate was filed following a failed mediation session. According to the St Petersburg Times, the certificate confirmed Williams’ body was moved out of Florida, and that it had not been cremated, buried or donated. The body’s current location was listed as ‘undetermined,’ and angry observers connected the dots.
On 16 July 2002, Ted Williams’ last will and testament was released to the public after being filed in court. Al Cassidy Jr., the son of a longtime Williams associate, served as executor of said will, signed on 20 December 1996. “I direct that my remains be cremated and my ashes sprinkled at sea off the coast of Florida, where the water is very deep,” read Ted’s will. However, simultaneously, Cassidy Jr. filed a court petition (without supporting documentation) arguing that Ted later changed his mind and wished to be cryogenically frozen. Confused about the next steps, Cassidy Jr. asked Judge Patricia Thomas to help him – as executor of the will – determine if Ted’s body should be cremated or remain at Alcor.
Ted’s will was witnessed and signed by Frank Brothers, a former Williams aide, who told the Boston Herald that Ted loathed cryonics. According to Brothers, Ted said, ‘You’re crazy,’ when John-Henry mentioned his Alcor proposal. “John-Henry said ‘Well, we don’t have to freeze your whole body, we can just do your head,’ and Ted said ‘No, I don’t want to be frozen. I want to be cremated. You’re nuts.’” Montville recounted similar exchanges, laden with expletives, underscoring Ted’s opposition to the plan.
Nevertheless, on 17 July 2002, John-Henry and Claudia filed a separate petition for Judge Thomas to dismiss the request of Cassidy Jr., arguing that Cassidy Jr. had no responsibility for Ted’s body, and that the Citrus County court lacked jurisdiction since said body was no longer in Florida, anyway. John-Henry and Claudia asked the judge to order a further mediation session, which passed without resolution six days later.
In the meantime, the Red Sox held a memorial service for Ted at Fenway Park, attended by more than 20,000 fans on a non-gameday. Dominic DiMaggio, a longtime friend and teammate, spoke at the ceremony, and despite Red Sox management encouraging guests not to mention cryonics, DiMaggio did. “This was not what Ted wanted,” he said. “I’m saddened by the turmoil of the current controversy. I hope and pray this controversy will end as abruptly as it began, and the family will do the right thing by honouring Ted’s final resting place. And may he rest in peace.”
A few days later, on 25 July, John-Henry and Claudia countered the publication of Ted’s will by producing a handwritten note, besmirched by oil after resting in the trunk of a car, which appeared to confirm a family pact regarding cryonics. Dated 2 November 2000 – after the will and before Ted underwent open-heart surgery – the note read as follows: “JHW, Claudia and Dad all agree to be put into biostasis after we die. This is what we want, to be able to be together in the future, even if it is only a chance.”
Conjecture and speculation ran away with the story at this point. Many accused John-Henry and Claudia of forgery, while others remarked on the convenient wording supposedly contained within the note. The Boston Herald even interviewed a handwriting expert, John Reznikoff, who said he would not authenticate the note. Bobby-Jo concurred, saying her father signed official documents with Theodore S Williams, rather than Ted Williams, as scrawled on the contentious note.
“Our father knew, as we did, that our decision to have our bodies preserved would seem odd, even crazy, to many, particularly those of his generation,” wrote John-Henry and Claudia in a statement regarding the note. “What happens to people’s bodies upon their death is largely a matter of religious tradition. Our father was not a religious man. The faith that many people place in God, we place in scientific achievement – space travel, the internet, and various medical advances – that would have seemed impossible to prior generations.”
Cassidy Jr. was convinced by such arguments, and on 8 August 2002, he declared in court papers that he thought the handwritten note was genuine, and that he no longer required the judge’s guidance on next steps. As executor of the will, Cassidy Jr.’s assessment – that Ted Williams wanted to be frozen, confirmed by the handwritten note – made it legally binding, unless proven otherwise, and the costs of doing so became prohibitive for Bobby-Jo. Per Montville, she had already spent more than $82,000 fighting the matter to that point, and public outrage did not translate to financial support for her campaign.
One has to wonder how much pressure Cassidy Jr. received before pronouncing the handwritten note as sufficient proof of Ted’s desire to be frozen. Similarly, one can only contemplate what may have happened – and what may have been different – had said handwritten note been subjected to serious legal scrutiny. Ultimately, though, the opinion of Cassidy Jr. won out, rather controversially, as options to free Ted Williams from Alcor dwindled.
As such, on 20 December 2002, Bobby-Jo settled her legal dispute with John-Henry and Claudia. According to Montville, she received $215,000 – released from a previous trust that Cassidy could have stalled – and agreed not to talk about her father’s freezing any further, nor to pursue future legal action.
The overall upshot of such legal machinations? Ted Williams’ dead body continued to be stored in a refrigerator, inside a soulless warehouse on a perfunctory industrial park in Scottsdale, Arizona, in the shadows of an airport, next-door to a dog collar manufacturer and across the street from a generic office complex. Quite whether Williams actually wanted such an incongruous fate remained frustratingly indecipherable, but the millions who adored him were consistently appalled. They could not abide such an alien legacy for such a salt-of-the-earth hero.
* * *
Following the family settlement, little was heard of Alcor or frozen Ted Williams until February 2003, when Buzz Hamon – a friend and former director of Ted’s eponymous museum – collaborated with Bill Madden of the New York Daily News on a shocking story. Hamon was worried by phone call with Ted just weeks before he died – in which Ted said he was a ‘prisoner’ and spoke of needing a lawyer after making a ‘mistake’ – perhaps related to the handwritten biostasis note. Seeking answers, Hamon allegedly gained access to Alcor with the help of a former mortician who lived in Phoenix. He claimed Alcor officials conducted an impromptu tour of the facility, which affirmed his worst suspicions.
“After what I saw and experienced, I just can’t contain myself any longer,” Hamon said. “I want the whole world to know what they’ve done to Ted. This was absolutely horrifying. There were six huge cylinders along the wall, one of which was filled with liquid nitrogen to supply the other five. I was stunned when [Jerry Lemler] told me they had 55 ‘patients,’ as he called them. How could they have so many? Then he told me there were four bodies and five heads in each of the cylinders. In addition, there were two short cylinders with just heads in them.”
Lemler told the Daily News he did not recall the visit by Hamon and the mortician. Nevertheless, questions persisted about the practices and motives of Alcor, yielding an apparent coup de grâce on 12 August 2003, when Sports Illustrated published an exclusive written by Tom Verducci, in collaboration with Larry Johnson, a disgruntled former Alcor chief operating officer.
Citing photographs, recordings and documents Johnson said were proprietary to Alcor, the Sports Illustrated piece painted a horrifying picture of abuse and malpractice that sent shockwaves through America. Johnson made a slew of sensational claims, most notably that Ted Williams’ body was not hanging upside down in a dewar, as originally thought, but rather that his head had been mistakenly severed during a botched Alcor procedure. According to Johnson, Ted’s head was stored in a ‘neuro can’ filled with nitrogen, and it had previously cracked due to equipment malfunctions.
Furthermore, Johnson spoke of Alcor employees taking photos of Ted’s body, and suggested eight samples of Ted’s DNA were missing. Per Johnson, Ted Williams never signed an Alcor consent form, nor did he ever meet any representatives of the organisation. Moreover, Johnson said, John-Henry and Claudia owed Alcor $111,000 from the $136,000 bill for freezing and storing their father. Oh, and while chasing the money, Alcor executives were allegedly recorded saying they may throw the body in the trash, post it on eBay, or send it to John-Henry in a cardboard box.
Unwisely, Johnson briefly sought to capitalise on interest in the Ted Williams saga by posting photos – allegedly of the slugger’s frozen body and decapitated head – to a personal website and charging users $20 to view them. Johnson quickly curtailed that harebrained scheme amid a vociferous backlash, but such a grave lapse of judgement called his motives – and his materials – into question.
Alcor responded quickly to Johnson’s Sports Illustrated takedown. While Lemler was hospitalised, receiving chemotherapy treatment, Carlos Mondragon, an Alcor director, appeared on CNN with Wolf Blitzer the day after the damning magazine hit newsstands. Again, Mondragon refused to confirm whether Ted Williams was an Alcor patient, but did speak in generalities about cryonics, arguing that enhancements in ‘vitrification technology’ had stoked a recent uptick in the separation of heads from bodies. This, Mondragon argued, was nothing extraordinary, and a standard part of Alcor operations.
When Johnson doubled-down by appearing on Good Morning America, likening the container for Ted’s head to a ‘lobster pot,’ Alcor served a lawsuit against Johnson and his wife, as necessitated by Arizona law. In its lawsuit, Alcor alleged breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and the conversion of company property for Johnson’s own use. Johnson countered with a lawsuit of his own, and both parties finally reached a settlement in August 2004 – Johnson returning all Alcor materials in return for a mutual cessation of hostilities.
Upheaval continued to plague Alcor, however. Lemler stepped down as president and CEO, citing health problems, and was replaced by Joseph Waynick. Charles Platt, another Alcor leader, also left. Meanwhile, the foundation faced renewed regulatory pressures as Arizona senator Bob Stump called for authority over cryonics to be removed from individual facilities and placed under oversight of the Arizona Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers. House Bill 2637 sought to extend the Board’s power to regulate any person or entity that stored a dead human body or human remains for more than five years. However, despite several promising readings, Stump withdrew his draft legislation, citing potential unintended consequences that may have protected Alcor and other cryonics labs from civil action.
With Johnson seemingly silenced, and state regulators increasingly reticent to engage, Alcor seemed to be navigating the storm pretty well. However, the March 2004 death of John-Henry Williams after a battle with myelogenous leukaemia rekindled interest in the saga. John-Henry was cryopreserved at Alcor, alongside his father, as per their alleged handwritten pact. However, the death of John-Henry had no bearing on Ted’s freezing, nor did it change the prospects of freeing him from Alcor. Only legally proving the handwritten note as inauthentic – a complex, costly endeavour – could make that happen.
Still, impassioned campaigners fought to free Ted, or at least learn more about his cryopreservation. In particular, attorney John Heer spearheaded a new line of attack, collaborating with Bobby-Jo and two of Ted Williams’ nephews to force Alcor to produce a Document of Gift (DG) pertaining to Ted’s case.
Required under the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, a signed DG must be received by a facility before it can accept donated human body parts. Heer unearthed a 1994 case in which a California appellate court ordered Alcor to release the body of a female ‘patient’ when it could not produce a valid DG. Noting similarities, Heer petitioned Maricopa county Superior Court to force Alcor into disclosing the DG for Ted, and a court order achieved that on 30 November 2004.
Alcor was given 30 days in which to produce the Ted Williams DG, and Waynick, the new CEO, announced its intention to do so on 3 December. “Alcor complies with the Arizona Anatomical Gift Act, and we have, and will continue, to vigorously defend the rights of our members and their families to choose cryopreservation. The court’s order is a victory for Alcor as it allows us to continue to provide uninterrupted service to our members and their families who properly comply with the requirements of the Arizona Anatomical Gift Act.”
Alcor subsequently delivered the DG, and other documents related to Ted Williams’ cryopreservation, to Heer on 20 December 2004, complying with the court order and formally confirming – for the first time – that The Splendid Splinter was, in fact, cryopreserved in the desert.
I found no trace of the DG online, but the lack of any further litigation from Heer suggests the documentation provided by Alcor complied with the Anatomical Gift Act. Whether the DG was signed by Ted Williams, or by John-Henry as his power of attorney, is another debate entirely, but without viewing the documentation, I cannot – and will not – speculate on the legal ramifications of such attribution. All we know for sure is that John Heer stopped his legal fight to free Ted Williams after seeing the DG provided by Alcor. And, by extension, Ted Williams remained frozen in Arizona.
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In October 2009, Larry Johnson resurfaced with Frozen, a tell-all book that expanded on his initial Sports Illustrated claims and seemed to violate the settlement agreement from 2004. Citing the same materials purportedly mined from Alcor, Johnson tried to reconstruct Williams’ ‘surgery and subsequent freezing’ in Scottsdale. “They seem to have been especially gruesome, barbaric, and utterly botched – even by Alcor’s minimal standards,” Johnson wrote. “That is not what Ted Williams should be remembered for.”
In Frozen, Johnson made several new claims, including that Alcor kept Ted’s head in a ‘CryoStar’ machine, semi-frozen, for up to a year, wary that ‘they needed it somewhere easily accessible so they could grab it and run in case they came under court order to return it to his family for the cremation Williams had requested in his will.’
According to Johnson, Ted’s body was accompanied by David Hayes, an ‘Alcor representative’ on a National Jets air ambulance from the Ocala airport. Upon landing in Scottsdale, it was transferred to a U-Haul truck lacking refrigeration and whisked to Alcor, where Ted Williams became Member A-1949 – an eery reference to one of Ted’s MVP seasons. Johnson then named those intimately involved in Williams’ Alcor surgery, including Hugh Hixon, a mechanical engineer; Mike Darwin, a dialysis machine technician; and Mathew Sullivan, a ‘director of suspension readiness.’
Johnson proceeded to recount shocking details of Williams’ supposed surgery, despite the fact he was not actually present in the room for it. Indeed, Johnson was not even employed by Alcor when Ted Williams arrived at the facility. Still, among other assorted claims, Johnson accused Alcor of expediting member deaths using lethal injections; dumping toxic waste and diseased blood into nearby shrubs and the city sewer system; and doxing him after the Sports Illustrated piece. Johnson wrote of receiving death threats from members of the cryonics community – some linked directly to Alcor – and shared supposed evidence of internet hate campaigns against him.
Perhaps the most egregious claim, however, was that Johnson witnessed Alcor employees treating Williams’ head ‘like some kind of grotesque piñata’ while appearing to play impromptu baseball games inside the facility. “Little gray chunks of Ted’s head flew off, peppering the walls, skittering across the floor, and sliding under the machinery,” wrote Johnson. “I was speechless.”
Alcor immediately denied the serious allegations and discredited Johnson’s reminiscence. “The Alcor Life Extension Foundation denies the outrageous allegations against it that have appeared in the media this week,” said Jennifer Chapman, an Alcor executive director. “Alcor especially denies mistreating the remains of baseball great Ted Williams. Larry Johnson, the ex-Alcor staff member who made these allegations, was not employed at Alcor when Williams was cryopreserved. Johnson’s previous attempts to profit from sensational and unfounded allegations against Alcor recently resulted in a court order prohibiting him from making further statements about Alcor. Alcor is actively pursuing litigation regarding these allegations.”
To wit, Alcor obtained a temporary restraining order against Johnson, thwarting any future attempts to level unproven allegations against the organisation. Nevertheless, Johnson appeared on ABC’s Nightline on 7 October 2009, in direct contravention of the restraining order. Alcor countered by accusing Johnson of fabrication, then subsequently sued Johnson – along with Scott Baldyga, his co-author, and Vanguard Press, his publisher – in March 2010. Johnson was found in contempt of court a few months later, for violating the earlier gag order, then eventually caved in February 2012, declaring bankruptcy and issuing a statement disavowing large swathes of his book:
“When the book Frozen was written, I believed my conclusions to be correct. However, information unknown to me and a more complete understanding of the facts furnished by ALCOR contradict part of my account and some of my conclusions. In light of this new information from ALCOR, some parts of the book are questioned as to veracity.
For example, my account of the Ted Williams cryopreservation, which was not based upon my first-hand observation as noted in my book, is contradicted by information furnished by ALCOR. I am not now certain that Ted Williams’ body was treated disrespectfully, or that any procedures were performed without authorization or conducted poorly.
To the extent my recollections and conclusions were erroneous, and those recollections and errors caused harm, I apologize.”
Alcor dropped Johnson from its defamation lawsuit, which continued in New York against Baldyga and Vanguard Press. And while Johnson’s credibility was duly shattered – his outlandish claims open to ridicule – the cautious wording of Johnson’s admission left a glimmer of uncertainty. Notably, Johnson did not disavow everything in Frozen – only ‘some parts of the book.’ That, in turn, poses questions about kernels of truth possibly buried in the otherwise discarded manuscript. Perhaps there was some truth to Johnson’s chronicles, obscured by sensational detritus.
In this regard, by Alcor’s own admission, filed in court documents, ‘Johnson intentionally took and kept without the permission of Alcor various documents, memoranda, photographs, a laptop computer (with highly sensitive information) and other proprietary and confidential information of Alcor.’ The photographs are particularly interesting to me, because, at best, they seem to illustrate a less-than-slick operation at Alcor. At worst, they could be construed as evidence of serious dysfunction.
In its court filings, Alcor went to great lengths to dissect various claims by Johnson that the organisation deemed false and defamatory. Noticeably absent from direct reference, though, was an email republished in Frozen, purportedly from Bobby-Jo Williams, sent at 1:25pm on the day her father died, stating, ‘DO NOT go any further – I am opposed to this procedure and you are ‘on notice’ at this time.’ If that email was correct and accurately represented by Johnson, surely Alcor – as a medical practitioner – had an ethical obligation to pause and investigate the competing family wishes, outwith any commercial agreement with John-Henry.
As an aside, during the New York litigation, Brian Wowk, an Alcor board member, submitted a signed affidavit, in which he confirmed two additional people involved in Williams’ Alcor surgery – Jose Kanshepolsky, a retired neurosurgeon; and Nancy McEachern, a doctor of veterinary medicine. I tracked down Kanshepolsky and, via Instagram, requested an interview on his role in the controversial cryopreservation of Ted Williams, but he did not respond.
Interestingly, while Johnson’s claims were largely discredited, in May 2014, the New York Supreme Court dismissed Alcor’s remaining defamation complaint against Baldyga and Vanguard Press. The court found that Alcor was unable to prove the publisher and co-author acted with knowledge that the book was false when published – a necessary proof in defamation suits. A summary judgement said the claim had no real prospects of success, and that judgement was upheld by the New York Supreme Court.
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By that point, two other books had been released shedding new light on the Williams-Alcor case. In May 2014, Claudia Williams published Ted Williams, My Father, a family memoir, in which she directly addressed cryonics for the first time:
“My family chose cryonics out of love. Our father knew we needed something to hold onto for hope and comfort and when we missed him the most, and if cryonics was the answer, then the solution was simple.
No one would spend over $100,000 and subject themselves to public outrage and ridicule for someone they don’t dearly love. There was no ill intent or devious plan…It [cryonics] was like a religion, something we could have faith in. It is no different from holding the belief that you might be reunited with your loved ones in heaven.I hate that I feel forced to explain why we chose to preserve our family cryonically. Quite frankly, It is no one’s damned business. It is a private family matter…This decision was made by a family who loved and respected each other. It is not a science-fiction film.”
Claudia’s book did not have a major impact, but the aforementioned work of Ben Bradlee Jr., released six months earlier, definitely did. A distinguished Boston Globe reporter and editor who contributed to Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of abuse in the Roman Catholic church, Bradlee Jr. spent almost a decade researching for a Ted Williams biography – including a trip to Alcor in 2006. The finished book, entitled The Kid, covered Ted’s later life in great detail, including extensive focus on the cryonics case.
David Hayes, the guy who accompanied Williams’ body from Florida to Arizona, was interviewed in The Kid, substantiating some of Larry Johnson’s earlier assertions – U-Haul truck aside. “We were given certain parameters we had to prepare for,” Hayes explained. “If Ted got sick or ill, we’d go into different levels of standby. We’d be prepared to get on the road, bags packed; or the other level of standby was to go to Citrus Hills and sit where the patient was for weeks on end. Crews went to wait near his house. There were many discussions about where to park the ambulances so it wouldn’t draw attention.”
Once Williams arrived at Alcor, a gruesome procedure unfurled, per Bradlee Jr., whose description shared more than a passing resemblance to that of Johnson:
“Inside the Alcor operating room, it took five or six people to lift Ted out of the Zigler Box – the airtight, metal container that airlines require for shipping bodies—in which he'd arrived. Under instructions from Alcor, a Florida mortician had filled the box with ice, a cryonics staple applied to the body immediately after death in order to keep it as cool as possible, and to help preserve vital organs.
Ted's body was placed on the operating table, face up. Attendants quickly pressed fresh bags of ice against his skin, especially around the head, neck and groin. The table was surrounded by a custom made, six-inch-high, white plastic wall to contain the ice and to keep excess fluids from spilling onto the floor during the upcoming operation that would last about four hours. Technicians began connecting the major blood vessels to a perfusion machine that would replace the blood with so-called cryoprotectant solutions. These chemicals, similar to antifreeze, were designed to help prevent the formation of ice crystals which could cause further cell damage before the intense cooling process began.
The technicians then started to drain blood and water from Ted's body in what Alcor called a ‘washout,’ replacing them with glycerol and another cryoprotectant known as B2C, which was used for the head only. Then, using a perforator, a standard neurological tool that looks like an electric drill, a surgeon and his assistant bored two small holes on either side of Ted's skull so that the surface of the brain could be examined during the perfusion process to guard against swelling. Small wire sensors were inserted into each hole to be used to detect cracking of the skull during the freezing process later.
Soon, the surgeon announced that he was ready to perform the ‘cephalic isolation.’ This meant Ted Williams's head was now ready to be cut off. The surgeon took out a carving knife and began to cut—starting below Ted's neck, slicing through tissue and bone, working his way down through the sixth cervical vertebrae, at the top of the spine. At one point, the going slow, the surgeon remarked that he wished he had an electric knife. Finally, he switched to a bone saw to finish the job, and at 9:17 p.m., Mountain time, the head of the greatest hitter who ever lived had been sliced off.”
Somewhat remarkably, I found no mention of Alcor suing Bradlee Jr. for defamatory details in The Kid. Indeed, while researching for this feature, I emailed Bradlee Jr., who confirmed no such litigation. “I never heard from Alcor in any way after my book came out,” he replied, adding fresh intrigue to my personal ruminations.
Perhaps Alcor resources were stretched by the case against Baldyga and Vanguard. Maybe senior Alcor personnel foresaw defeat in that matter, bringing unknown consequences to future litigation. Or perhaps Alcor was just sick and tired of raking over old coals, attempting to defend its ethics and practices in a court of public opinion already predisposed to criticise both.
Still, the fact remains: neither Frozen nor The Kid have been deemed defamatory – and thus, necessarily, incorrect – by courts of law. Only Johnson’s partial retraction, and the consistent denials of Alcor, weigh against the correctness of either account. Readers should draw their own conclusions by analysing these facts.
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David Hayes died in 2010 and is frozen at Alcor. Jerry Lemler is also deceased and – quite remarkably – is not frozen at Alcor. According to Rudi Hoffman, a longtime Alcor member, Lemler’s second wife grew weary of the $80 monthly payments to Alcor, effectively reserving a future dewar, and forbade Lemler from fulfilling his lifelong wish. Pretty ironic, huh? Karma can be a bitch.
Claudia Williams also passed away, in December 2023, and the Red Sox mourned her loss in a press release. Eight months on, it is still unclear whether Claudia was cryopreserved after her death, in keeping with the so-called pact signed with her father and brother. But as we have seen, in the absence of family declarations, it is easy for cryonics labs to invoke confidentiality when questioned about the identity of patients, so gaining definitive closure on Claudia’s final resting place is complicated.
And as for her father? Well, Ted Williams remains frozen in the desert, so far as we are aware, along with 233 other humans and numerous animals. And unless anybody can prove as inauthentic the controversial handwritten note taken as proof of his cryonics desire, or disprove the validity of the document of gift that allowed Alcor to accept his body, that is where the greatest Red Sox player of all-time will remain – until such time as medical advancements enable reanimation, or until Alcor goes bust.
“Ted Williams could come back as the young Ted Williams if he wanted,” Jerry Lemler once said, relayed by Montville. “If he wanted, he’d be able to run and throw and hit, just the way he did. I don’t know if they’ll still have baseball then, but if they do, he’ll break all of those records that Barry Bonds will set.”
Of course, this seems patently absurd. Bringing a human back to life is one thing; bringing a human back to life and reversing sixty years of ageing is quite another. Right now, it is impossible, in fact, and the overwhelming likelihood is that always remains the case. Nevertheless, technology has advanced a whole lot since Ted Williams died. The great man never inhabited a world containing Facebook, YouTube, iPhones or ChatGPT, for instance, so the pace of change since his death has been exponential. Whether that extends to medical advances – so far, and to come – is another debate entirely, but do not bank on Ted Williams returning to the Red Sox anytime soon.
Alcor did that, and scandal has followed it ever since.
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