Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Las Vegas legends lack facts

Diane Flora is one of more than half a dozen people across the nation who have called the SUN in the past week to find out if there is an organ-stealing ring operating in Las Vegas.

The 49-year-old Seattle medical technician said one of her husband's co-workers said she had a friend who visited Las Vegas last month. The man went to his room with a woman he met in a bar and awoke the next morning in a bathtub full of ice -- and missing a kidney, Flora said.

"I don't believe it happened," said Flora, who visited Las Vegas once in the late 1970s. "But I am curious because other people here have heard the same story."

Although Las Vegas has had its share of grisly crimes over the years, this was not one of them.

The stolen kidney caper is what folklore experts call an urban legend.

"The problem with trying to debunk these stories is that people tend to remember only the dramatic part and retell it as fact," said Jan Harold Brunvand, a professor of English and folklore at the University of Utah. He has written five books on the subject.

"This story first appeared in newspapers in the late winter of 1991, with the incident reportedly having occurred in New York," he said. "Over the years, Las Vegas and other large tourist centers have been reported as the sites."

Brunvand, who is retiring from teaching at the end of June, detailed the kidney-stealing legend in his fifth book, "The Baby Train," in 1993.

He said the problem with urban legends is that in almost every case the person relating the details is quoting a "friend of a friend" and does not have access to the main source. Nor does the storyteller know the name of the supposed victim.

In addition to Flora's call, the SUN received calls from Chicago and the East Coast -- all inquiring as to the authenticity of the kidney-stealing report.

"That story has been circulating for a couple of years, and we get about a dozen inquiries a year about it," said Clark County Coroner Ron Flud, noting that he has had no cases fitting the description of organ theft.

Mercy Ambulance spokes woman Shelly Cochran recently started reading Brunvand's first book, "The Vanishing Hitchhiker," initially published in 1981 and still in print. She said she is amazed at some of the stories and notes that the Las Vegas kidney tale fits the mold.

"I asked our dispatcher whether we've responded to such calls and she laughed," Cochran said. "A couple of weeks ago, a reporter in New York, working for a British tabloid, called and asked about the same incident."

Metro Police robbery Lt. Wayne Peterson recently was asked by four friends if the kidney-snatching story was true.

"I wouldn't know which department would handle the investigation because we never have had a case like that," Peterson said. "It would be either a robbery or battery with substantial bodily harm."

In each instance, he said the story is the same right down to the bathtub full of ice, and each time "it's total BS. There is no substance, just word of mouth, and it travels fast."

A source on the Internet, which has newsgroups devoted to retelling and debunking urban legends (alt.folklore.urban is one), says an urban legend:

"Appears mysteriously and spreads spontaneously in varying forms, contains elements of humor or horror (the horror often 'punishes' someone who flouts society's conventions), makes good storytelling and does not have to be false, although most are."

The source adds:

"Urban legends often have a basis in fact, but it's their life after the fact that gives them particular interest."

In addition to the kidney-harvesting hoax, there are several other popular urban legends related to Southern Nevada. Among them:

* MATTRESS CORPSE: A couple checks into a Las Vegas hotel room that has a terrible odor. Hotel security is called to check it out and finds a decomposing body of a dead prostitute inside a mattress (sometimes the story is that the body is simply under the bed). Flud said that while prostitutes have been found slain in hotel and motel rooms, none are so decomposed. A maid cleaning the room between guests would be likely to discover a body before it reached that point.

* DAM BODIES: There have been reports for years that three Hoover Dam builders fell into cement being poured and are entombed in the dam. While 96 men were killed building the architectural wonder, none of them died that way. The method of pouring was such that a worker could easily be pulled out. And a body would have so messed up the cement-pouring process that workers would have had to stop to remove it rather then let it set in the cement.

* IS ROY ROY?: Over the years, several reporters have called Flud to check out a rumor that Roy Horn of the popular Siegfried & Roy magician duo died several years ago in Europe and has been secretly replaced by an imposter -- his cousin. The story has long been debunked. Flud advises them to call a coroner in Europe who would have had jurisdiction. He said there is no way he would know unless the death occurred in Clark County and the case was assigned to the medical examiner for an autopsy.

* ELEVATOR TALES: A black celebrity -- the name differs depending on which entertainer is in town at the time -- and his dog gets on a Strip hotel elevator occupied by a woman who is unfamiliar with the performer. The man snaps at the excited dog: "Get down, Lady!" The woman, fearing she is about to become the victim of a mugging, hits the deck. The celebrity, feeling bad that he frightened the woman, later sends her flowers and a gift as an apology.

There also is the story of the woman who got on a Las Vegas elevator naked. A man, at first lost for words, turns to her and says: "Gee, my wife has an outfit just like that." There is no evidence either event actually happened.

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