The 2,411 aborted fetal remains discovered last year at Illinois properties owned by a deceased Indiana abortion doctor cannot be individually identified due to decomposition and poor record keeping, according to Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill Jr.
Hill released a preliminary report Tuesday detailing his office's investigation into Dr. Ulrich Klopfer, who operated abortion clinics in Gary, South Bend and Fort Wayne between 1979 and 2016 when Indiana suspended Klopfer's medical license due to professional incompetence.
After Klopfer died Sept. 3, his family found 2,246 bagged fetal remains stored in molding boxes and old Styrofoam containers alongside boxes of personal items, rusting cars, pop cans and random garbage stacked to the ceiling in the garage of Klopfer's Will County, Illinois, home, according to the report.
An additional 165 fetal remains later were located in the trunk of a late 1990s Mercedes Benz automobile stored alongside other Klopfer-owned vehicles in Dolton, Illinois, Hill said.
People are also reading…
The attorney general said he was able to confirm the remains date from Indiana abortions conducted between 2000 and 2003.
But due to the poor condition of the remains, and unreliable accompanying records, it's "not possible to make an independent verification of the identities of the individual fetal remains," Hill said.
The fetal remains have since been brought to Indiana from Illinois and currently are being held by the St. Joseph County coroner, according to the report.
In accordance with Indiana law, Hill said he plans to eventually "provide for a dignified burial of the fetal remains at a public cemetery in a non-denominational manner."
The report also details how officials in the attorney general's office — which is responsible for securing abandoned medical records — searched Klopfer's former medical offices, including the Gary location, along with three Hobart storage units rented by Klopfer.
They found the shuttered Friendship and Family Planning Clinic of Indiana in Gary to be "extremely cluttered" with "garbage and boxes strewn throughout," along with several unlocked file cabinets and boxes stuffed with medical records, according to the report.
No fetal remains were found in Klopfer's Gary clinic or Hobart storage units, where investigators also discovered more old medical records intermingled with boxes of personal items, garbage, old furniture and car parts.
Hill said the medical records have been relocated from all of Klopfer's properties to a secure state storage facility. The records are being indexed and scheduled for disposal according to the records retention requirements of Indiana law, he said.
Women who suspect their medical records might have been recovered can retrieve them by filling out and submitting the Abandoned Records Request Form from the in.gov/attorneygeneral website, or by calling the attorney general's office at 800-382-5516.
