Museum issues response after mom claims she saw sons skinned body displayed!

The Las Vegas Real Bodies exhibit was meant to be clinical and educational, a place where visitors could study anatomy without the filter of skin or sentiment. For Texas mother Kim Erick, it became something far more disturbing. What others saw as a plastinated anatomical model, she believed was her son, displayed, posed, and stripped of identity. From the moment she stood in front of the figure known as The Thinker, no amount of official reassurance has been enough to quiet her certainty.

Kim’s doubts did not begin in the exhibit hall. They began years earlier with the sudden death of her son, 23 year old Chris Todd Erick, in 2012. Police ruled the cause an undiagnosed heart condition that triggered two fatal heart attacks. While Kim was overwhelmed with shock and grief, Chris’s father and grandmother moved quickly. They arranged a rapid cremation, leaving Kim with only a necklace said to contain a portion of his ashes. The speed of the process unsettled her, but in the heavy fog of loss, she accepted the explanation because she did not feel strong enough to challenge it.

Later, new images reopened old wounds. Kim saw police photographs showing bruises along Chris’s arms. She did not understand how those marks fit into a sudden medical death. To her, they suggested the possibility of restraint. Questions she had buried surfaced again with force. In 2014, a homicide investigation was conducted. Authorities reaffirmed that there had been no foul play. Officially, the case was closed. Emotionally, for Kim, it never was. Doubt lingered like a low, constant ache.

Everything shifted in 2018 when she visited the Real Bodies exhibit in Las Vegas. As she walked through the display, one figure froze her in place. The Thinker was seated, skinless, exposed in a posture meant for contemplation. Kim saw more than anatomy. She believed she saw her son. She thought the skull fracture matched an injury Chris once suffered. She believed the proportions of the body matched his build. Then her eyes went to the upper arm. Where Chris had once had a tattoo, she believed she saw a patch of skin removed before preservation. In that moment, coincidence felt impossible to her.

Shaken, Kim demanded answers. She asked for DNA testing. The organizers refused. Instead, they produced paperwork stating that the body had been plastinated in 2004, eight years before Chris ever died. They insisted the remains were sourced legally from China and had no connection to her son. From their perspective, the case was simple. The timeline alone made her belief impossible.

For Kim, the paperwork meant nothing. Her suspicion only deepened when, months later, The Thinker was quietly removed from the exhibit without public explanation. To organizers, exhibits change and rotate. To Kim, the removal felt like confirmation that something was being hidden. The absence of transparency fed her fear far more than the presence of documents ever could.

Officials continue to stand by the documentation and the legality of their process. They emphasize that no part of their sourcing overlaps with Chris’s death. From their viewpoint, evidence settles the matter. From Kim’s viewpoint, evidence is not only paperwork. It is memory. It is a mother’s sense of recognition. It is the unresolved gaps in a story she never fully believed to begin with.

Her conviction is rooted not in logic alone, but in grief, instinct, and a long chain of unanswered questions. She does not trust the speed of the cremation. She does not trust the bruises. She does not trust the sudden disappearance of the figure she believes was her son. Each doubt reinforces the next until they form a closed loop she cannot escape.

And so Kim keeps searching. She speaks out. She demands explanations that satisfy more than policy and procedure. Whether her belief is ever proven or disproven beyond question, one truth remains unchanged. A mother who feels her child was taken from her twice will not easily accept silence as closure. She refuses to let the story end until the questions that haunt her are finally laid to rest.