Many years ago when I worked in Dallas, I had a mentor.  His name was Larry Johnson, and he was my Clinical Coordinator when I was getting into critical care.  I always admired this man who seemed to always have time to answer all my questions.  He is one of the reasons that I became an educator, and I have always been proud to say that I was part of the ground breaking program that Bryan Bledsoe and he put together.  Recently I was shocked to find out that Larry Johnson had left EMS.  I was even more shocked to find that he was running for his life.

As the story goes, he decided that it was time for a change and accepted a job at a cryonics lab in Phoenix, Arizona.  It wasn’t long before he started witnessing some strange practices there.  Larry is one of the most ethical and genuinely honest people I have ever met.  This proved to be unfortunate for the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, because Larry didn’t just look the other way while he looked for another job.  He worked over the course of many months to gather evidence about the company and expose them.

According to Larry, the head of famous ballplayer Ted Williams was horribly mishandled.  I won’t go into details, but it involves a monkey wrench and a tuna can.  He also gathered evidence that two people were possibly prematurely killed just before they would have naturally died in order to facilitate post-death procedures.

Once he began to expose Alcor, Larry started to receive death threats and went on the run.  While he was moving from state to state he started to write his book ‘Frozen: My Journey into the World of Cryonics, Deception, and Death.’  Now that it has been published, he has come out of hiding and gained a certain level of protection.  He has come forward to do a few interviews.  Many people have accused him of making this whole story up, but I can assure you that my friend and colleague is simply not capable of anything like that.  By making this move he was able to put himself in the public eye and prevent injury to himself, expose Alcor, and help support his family and financially recover from his months of hiding all in one stroke.  This is a testament to how smart this man is.  He was able to turn this situation around to his benefit, and do what was ethically correct in the process.

If you are in doubt about the legitimacy of his claims, don’t just take his word for it.  Many people have published outlandish stories about cryogenics.  ‘This American Life’ did a fascinating piece on a horribly botched cryonics project back in April of this year.

I would love to interview Larry for my Copy Code Threeproject, but I fear that he would rather stay out of the public eye, and a recent court injunction by Alcor may prevent him from talking in public for awhile. 

Larry’s troubles are far from over.  I am sure that he has a long road of legal battles ahead of him that will no doubt take a toll on his family’s finances.  Please help support him by buying his book.  And while you are at it, learn about this ghoulish tale.  It’s near Halloween release couldn’t be timed any more appropriately.

Larry also appeared on Nightline, but the video in not embeddable.