INDIANAPOLIS — The dark, hidden history of early 20th-century body snatching in Indiana will take center stage next month at the Indiana State Library.
As part of its ongoing Summer Lecture Series, the library will host a special presentation titled “A Famine of Cadavers: Inside Indy’s 1902 Graverobbing Syndicate.” The event is scheduled for Saturday, July 11, 2026, from 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the library’s historic History Reference Room.
The lecture will transport attendees back to the autumn of 1902, when a shocking police investigation exposed a massive, highly organized body-snatching ring operating right under the feet of central Indiana residents. Investigators at the time estimated that more than 300 graves had been systematically plundered in Marion County alone.
During this era, regional medical colleges faced a desperate shortage of human subjects for anatomical training. This demand fueled a lucrative underground market managed by “ghouls”—underworld figures who dug up fresh graves to sell the remains to medical students and doctors…