{"id":303804,"date":"2024-04-01T08:04:07","date_gmt":"2024-04-01T13:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/?p=303804"},"modified":"2024-04-01T16:58:50","modified_gmt":"2024-04-01T21:58:50","slug":"vegas-myths-busted-the-cadaver-brothel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/vegas-myths-busted-the-cadaver-brothel\/","title":{"rendered":"VEGAS MYTHS BUSTED: The Cadaver Brothel"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2018, a Las Vegas man was reportedly arrested for using the premises of his employer, the Clark County Coroner\u2019s Office, to run a \u201ccadaver brothel\u201d during closing hours.<\/p>\n

\"cadaver
Please don’t try this at home, kids. (Image: medicalstretchers.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is not<\/em> an April Fools’ joke.<\/p>\n

\n

For more than five years, James Whitaker, 36, reportedly accepted large sums of cash in exchange for allowing men to have sex with their pick of the dead bodies entrusted to his care as a medical examiner.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cAccording to investigators, he asked customers from $1,500 to $5,000 per sexual encounter, depending on the \u2018quality of the merchandise,\u2019\u201d read a story published by the World News Daily Report (WNDR)<\/em> website on July 13, 2018.<\/p>\n

Working Stiffs<\/h2>\n

Whitaker was reportedly arrested after agreeing to sell the “services” of a 49-year-old car accident victim to an undercover Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officer.<\/p>\n

\u201cInvestigators had to spend months chatting with him on necrophile forums before he let his guard down and offered his services,\u201d according to the WNDR<\/em>. \u201cA sting operation was rapidly organized and he was arrested on the spot.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
A mug shot of the alleged perp. (Image: World News Daily Report<\/em>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A total of 1,734 criminal charges of necrophilia, corpse desecration, and felony mutilation of human remains meant that Whitaker faced up to 700 years in prison, the website noted.<\/p>\n

And what did Whitaker have to say for himself? Only that he hoped his trial would \u201clead to the abolition of Nevada\u2019s laws against necrophilia,\u201d which he believed were unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

Death Blow<\/h2>\n

We stated before that this wasn’t an April Fools’ joke. However, we didn’t state that the story was true.<\/p>\n

The World News Daily Report,<\/em> it turns out, is one of an alarmingly increasing number of “news satire\u201d websites designed to fool people into sharing sensational stories crafted without a hint of the humor or sarcasm of The Onion<\/em> or even the Weekly World News.<\/em><\/p>\n

The World News Daily Report<\/em> was founded in November 2013 by Janick Murray-Hall and Olivier Legault in their native Canada. Two years later, Gizmodo<\/em>, a real news website, ranked it among the world’s nine worst fake ones. Journalist Matt Novak wrote that the World News Daily Report<\/em> \u201cdoesn\u2019t always seem intent on deceiving people, but it\u2019s still not very good, not very good at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the small number of people actually amused by its stories must be its authors, who frequently pepper them with real facts and assorted in-jokes that no one else could possibly appreciate, such as the actual photographs and names of virtually unknown criminals and police officers.<\/p>\n

\"\"
A typical World News Daily Report<\/em> headline from 2019. (Image: X.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In its cadaver brothel story, which was inspired by an unsavory old Sam Kinison comedy routine called “Parties with the Dead,” the mugshot belonged to Lester Mullet, leader of a ring of members of a breakaway Amish group charged with hate crimes for \u201chaircutting attacks against other Amish,\u201d according to a 2011 Associated Press <\/em>story.<\/p>\n

By the way, asinine fiction is better than a real story like that how?<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Fake News’ Real Harm<\/h2>\n

If social media were still just a source of entertainment, the continued spread of fake news would be an easier pill to swallow. But for Gen Z — those born between 1997 and 2012 — social media is their main source of information.<\/p>\n

In fact, a 2022 study by Reuters<\/em> found that 39% of 18-to-24-year-olds consulted only<\/em> social media to stay informed, versus 34% who also visited the news websites and apps still frequented by older generations.<\/p>\n

In other words, these sites help to further erode America\u2019s already flagging trust in legitimate news sources for their operators\u2019 financial gain.<\/p>\n

The cadaver brothel story was shared by dozens of social media sites. The largest, with 17K followers, was the UK’s non-satirical City of Preston News Network<\/em> on Facebook, whose motto is “We believe news should be uncensored.” It went so viral, Snopes<\/em> dedicated a page to debunking it.<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
This World News Daily Report<\/em> gem quite rightly outraged thousands of Twitter users who shared it from 2014 to 2018. So you don\u2019t understand what could possibly qualify it as satire? We don\u2019t, either. (Image: X\/Twitter)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Of course, like most fake news sites, the World News Daily Report<\/em> publishes a disclaimer: “WNDR<\/em> assumes all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles, and for the fictional nature of their content.”<\/p>\n

Right. Because everyone on social media searches for disclaimers published deep within websites before clicking the “share” button on an insane-sounding headline.<\/p>\n

Though Murray-Hall claimed that the World News Daily Report<\/em> generated more than $73K in the last four months of 2018, as of this writing, the site no longer exists and no explanation was offered as to why. (Like anyone would believe a word uttered by its creators anyway.)<\/p>\n

Please don\u2019t cry, though. Replacement misinformation websites pop up every day that are just as worthwhile.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: That last sentence was satirical.<\/p>\n

Look for \u201cVegas Myths Busted\u201d every Monday<\/strong> on Casino.org.<\/em> Visit VegasMythsBusted.com<\/a>\u00a0to read previously busted Vegas myths. Got a suggestion for a Vegas myth that needs busting? Email corey@casino.org.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2018, a Las Vegas man was reportedly arrested for using the premises of his employer, the Clark County Coroner\u2019s Office, to run a \u201ccadaver brothel\u201d during closing hours. This is not an April Fools’ joke. For more than five years, James Whitaker, 36, reportedly accepted large sums of cash in exchange for allowing men […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":78,"featured_media":303809,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,81886,88494,1],"tags":[81960,82490,89199,84518,89201,23,89202,24,89200],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nVEGAS MYTHS BUSTED: The Cadaver Brothel - Casino.org<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In 2018, a Las Vegas man was reportedly arrested for using the premises of his employer, the Clark County Coroner\u2019s Office, to run a \u201ccadaver brothel\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/vegas-myths-busted-the-cadaver-brothel\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"VEGAS MYTHS BUSTED: The Cadaver Brothel - 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