Museum releases statement after mother alleges her son’s skinned body was on display.

The Las Vegas exhibition was meant to be educational—calm, clinical, the kind of environment where visitors wander quietly through displays of human anatomy without stopping to consider the real lives behind the preserved bodies. But for one Texas mother, the visit took a much darker turn. What most people saw as an ordinary scientific exhibit, she saw as something horrifyingly personal: her own son’s skinned body, posed and presented as an anatomical showcase. And no matter how many officials insist she is mistaken, she has never stopped fighting that belief.

Kim Erick has lived with unresolved questions ever since the death of her 23-year-old son, Chris Todd Erick, in 2012. According to police, he died of two heart attacks brought on by an undiagnosed heart condition. He was discovered in his grandmother’s home in Midlothian, Texas—alone, slumped over, with no chance of revival. His father and grandmother arranged the cremation immediately, and the only thing Kim received was a necklace containing what she was told were some of his ashes. From the beginning, everything about the situation felt rushed, too neatly handled, as though the door had been shut before she could process any of it. But grief can smother instinct, and she spent months trying to convince herself the official explanation made sense.

Then she saw the photos.

Police images showed bruising on Chris’s arms—dark blotches she couldn’t explain, shapes that reminded her of restraint marks. She pressed the police for clarity, but the homicide investigation completed in 2014 repeated the same conclusion: natural causes. No evidence of foul play. No justification to reopen the case. Kim was left with lingering doubt and the painful sense that her son’s story had been wrapped up long before anyone truly listened to her concerns.

That doubt solidified into something unshakable when she visited the Real Bodies exhibit in 2018. Visitors walked slowly through the displays, studying muscles and organs preserved through plastination—a technique where bodily fluids are replaced with polymers, turning bodies into permanent anatomical models. But one exhibit stopped Kim cold: a seated, skinless figure titled “The Thinker.”

Something about it struck her as disturbingly familiar.

She stared at the skull and thought she recognized a fracture identical to one Chris had once suffered. She examined the proportions of the limbs and became convinced they matched her son’s frame. But the detail that felt like a punch to the gut was the area where Chris had a tattoo. On the figure’s upper arm, that spot appeared to have been specifically cut out before preservation. The resemblance left her breathless.

Kim demanded the exhibit allow DNA testing. Their response was immediate and absolute: no.

Representatives insisted the body came from legal sources in China—like every other specimen in the display—and that it had been plastinated in 2004, eight years before Chris’s death. They produced documentation. They showed archival photographs. As far as they were concerned, the matter wasn’t just closed—it had never been open.

Kim refused to accept that. She couldn’t.

Her suspicion only deepened when “The Thinker” was quietly removed from the Las Vegas exhibit later that year. When she tried to follow its trail, it disappeared completely. No announcement. No updated exhibit listings. Nothing. For Kim, the sudden disappearance wasn’t a coincidence—it felt like evidence being tucked out of sight.

Her fears reignited again in 2023, after hundreds of unidentified cremated remains were discovered scattered in the Nevada desert. Most had no connection to the exhibit, but for Kim, it reinforced her belief that bodies—real people—could be mishandled or lost without accountability.

Officials continue to stand by their records. Investigators repeat the same conclusion: the plastinated figure cannot be Chris. The timeline alone makes it impossible. The specimen predates his death by nearly a decade. The museum maintains that all bodies in the exhibit were acquired legally and ethically—at least as far as Chinese sourcing records allow anyone to verify.

But Kim’s conviction runs deeper than paperwork. Her certainty is rooted in grief, fear, and the kind of heartbreak that never loosens its grip. The official narrative hasn’t comforted her. The answers she’s been given don’t soothe her doubts. To her, the similarities she saw weren’t coincidences—they were signals. Indicators. Pieces of a truth no one else was willing to acknowledge.

And so she continues searching.

Every so often, her story resurfaces online. Someone reposts the article. Someone asks whether any updates have emerged. Some dismiss her claims outright, while others wonder if something more sinister could have happened behind the scenes. Each time, the discussions circle the same difficult questions: How much can grief shape a person’s perception? And how far should institutions go to prove transparency when a grieving mother believes they are hiding the truth?

Kim says she isn’t stopping—not until she knows exactly what happened to Chris. Even if the search leads through shadows, dead ends, and silence. For her, the fight is no longer just about the possibility that her son’s body was misused. It’s about dignity. Truth. Resolution. All the things she never received.

The museum has records, timelines, and official statements on its side.

Kim has her son.

And sometimes, those two forces collide in ways no investigation can neatly sort out.

What remains certain is this: for Kim, the story isn’t finished. Not until she says it is.