Kansas man who performed illegal autopsies sentenced to additional time behind bars
A Kansas man already serving a federal prison sentence for performing illegal autopsies was sentenced Tuesday in Wabaunsee County District Court to serve an additional year in jail on state criminal charges.
Shawn Parcells, 43, who has lived in Leawood and Topeka, was sentenced to one year in Wabaunsee County Jail for three counts of misdemeanor criminal desecration and one year of probation for three counts of felony theft, according to a news release from Attorney General Derek Schmidt.
Judge Jeffrey Elder ordered Parcells to serve his sentence in county jail following his five year and nine month sentence in federal prison on 10 counts of wire fraud. A federal grand jury indicted him in November 2020.
He was convicted on the state charges in November 2021, when a jury found he unlawfully obtained money from Wabaunsee County to perform autopsies in three cases in 2014 and 2015. The jury also found that Parcells had unauthorized control of the bodies and performed the autopsies in each instance without a pathologist, violating state law.
Parcells created his business, National Autopsy Services, LLC in 2016, according to the indictment. He previously worked as a pathologists’ assistant for the Jackson County Medical Examiner’s office before starting his business, but never received a board certification for the position.
Through his business, which said on its website it was headquartered in Topeka, Parcells claimed to offer private autopsies, forensic pathology services and tissue recovery services for families, attorneys and other research institutions.
Between 2016 and 2019, Parcells allegedly received fees from 375 clients to perform autopsies, totaling more than $1.1 million. Prosecutors say Parcells told clients their cases would be handled by a pathologist and included the name of a licensed pathologist on reports given to families. No licensed pathologist worked on any of the cases.
Parcells claimed to need 90 to 180 days to complete autopsies, but he rarely produced reports. Prosecutors said he delayed complaints from clients by telling them he needed additional information to finish a case when he had “no intention or ability to complete the case.”
In 2019, a Shawnee County district judge temporarily banned him and his companies from conducting autopsies, forensic pathology and tissue recovery until the lawsuit, which claimed violations of Kansas’ consumer protection and false claims acts, was resolved.
In a separate civil case in Shawnee County District Court, Parcells and three of his corporate entities were permanently banned in August from doing business in Kansas. They were ordered to pay more than $250,000 in restitution to 82 consumers related to private autopsy services, more than $49,000 in damages to Wabaunsee County and $400,000 in civil penalties.
Parcells received national attention in 2014, when he assisted with the private autopsy of Michael Brown, who was killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and CNN both reported instances in which Parcells had lied about or inflated his qualifications.
This story includes reporting from The Star’s Aarón Torres.
