Slugger Ted Williams’ head batted around?
Alcor Life to sue author of tell-all tome
By Dave Wedge
Saturday, October 3, 2009 - Updated 11h ago
An Arizona lab that houses Ted Williams’ frozen remains will file suit Monday to block a new book claiming the Red Sox [team stats] great’s head was treated like a “grotesque pinata” and smacked with a wrench, among other macabre misdeeds, the Herald has learned.
New York attorney Vincent Bauer said he intends to file the lawsuit in New York Supreme Court on behalf of Alcor Life Extension against Larry Johnson, the company’s former chief operating officer and author of the explosive new book, “Frozen: My Journey Into the World of Cryonics, Deception and Death.”
The tell-all tome is slated to come out Tuesday.
The Scottsdale, Ariz., company - which denied the allegations on its Web site - describes itself as “the world leader in cryonics . . . a speculative life support technology that seeks to preserve human life . . . in a state that will be viable and treatable by future medicine.”
Shortly after Williams died in 2002, his head was frozen and placed in a so-called “neuro-suspension” at Alcor’s facility.
Bauer said the suit will accuse Johnson of violating a July order by an Arizona Superior Court judge barring him from “publishing or communicating any information about Alcor to third parties, including . . . any and all information which disparages Alcor in any way.”
“We’re looking to hold Mr. Johnson to his agreements and force him to comply with a valid court order,” Bauer said.
A spokesman for Johnson did not return repeated calls.
Williams family attorney Peter Sutton of the Boston firm Riemer & Braunstein said: “Ted and (his son) John Henry Williams are resting in peace at a place where their family made a private decision to place their remains. It is sad that the author is just another person trying to capitalize on Ted’s good name and fame to get publicity for selling his book.”
In sickening detail, Johnson claims two lab workers bashed the legendary slugger’s frozen skull with a wrench to dislodge it from its pedestal: a Bumble Bee tuna can.
“Little gray chunks of Ted’s head flew off, peppering the walls, skittering across the floor and sliding under the machinery,” Johnson writes.
He also alleges Alcor was supposed to keep Williams’ body intact and not remove the head.
A mortician who performed the decapitation procedure on patient “A-1949,” as Williams was known, “joked about needing an electric carving knife” as he cut through the ballplayer’s bone. After the procedure was finished, the book alleges, Alcor officials realized the family had actually requested a “full body suspension,” not a “neuro-suspension.”
“They weren’t supposed to decapitate him,” Johnson wrote. “Even for Alcor’s amateur surgical team, this was an unfathomable blunder.”
Bauer declined to comment on the allegations.
Williams’ former teammate, Johnny Pesky, called the flap “sad” but defended his pal’s decision to have his remains frozen at Alcor.
“I feel bad about it, but Ted Williams was his own man and he could do anything he wanted,” Pesky said. “He wished to go that way and hoped he could be saved. All I do is remember the great things he did. ”
The book, which blasts the controversial company as “cult-like,” also says Williams’ 2002 arrival at the Alcor facility created a sideshow atmosphere as “cryonicists with cameras swarmed . . . laughing, joking and snapping souvenir pictures.”
