Whistleblower says a female co-worker faked documents, experimented on dismembered limbs, and cremated the remains at a North Austin mortuary.
A Texas mortuary has gone dark – and not just because of the lighting. After what sounds like a horror-movie subplot crossed with a paperwork scandal, 50-year-old Adeline Ngan-Binh Bui is facing a collection of felony charges that include abusing a corpse and forging death certificates.
Bui, who worked at Capital Mortuary Services in North Austin, is now charged with one count of state-jail felony abuse of a corpse and five counts of second-degree felony tampering with government records. The alleged wrongdoing dates back to at least August 2022, according to court documents obtained by FOX 7.
It gets weirder.
A former embalmer at the same mortuary told the Texas Funeral Service Commission (TFSC) that Bui fraudulently issued at least ten death certificates using his name and license number – without so much as a heads-up. And that wasn’t even the creepiest part.
The whistleblower also claimed that Bui took a hands-on approach to postmortem science by conducting unauthorized “experiments” on severed limbs. Specifically, he alleged that Bui injected formaldehyde into dismembered arms to observe how the tissue responded over time. According to court records, it wasn’t just a one-off curiosity. It was documented and photographed.
In one December 2023 exchange cited in the investigation, Bui allegedly messaged a former employee, saying, “let’s us[e] this update to monitor our experiment,” attaching photos of severed arms in various states of decomposition. That’s not exactly textbook embalming.
Adding to the macabre, TFSC investigators said Bui later had the dissected limbs cremated, post-experiment, of course. That decision likely didn’t make the health inspectors’ top 10 list of safe funeral practices.
Capital Mortuary Services received a cease-and-desist order on April 10 for failing building, health, and safety standards. The place has since shuttered, with silence settling over what used to be its last-responder operations.
Meanwhile, the Austin Police Department collected eight suspicious death certificates allegedly signed with the former embalmer’s electronic signature. He insists he never accessed the TxEVER system used to generate them and was only employed as a crematory operator, driver, and embalmer – not a funeral director with access to the official forms.
Bui’s legal team is urging people not to leap to conclusions. “This case involves complexities that are not immediately apparent and should not be sensationalized,” they said in a statement to FOX 7, appealing for fairness and due process.
Still, with one mortuary closed, several limbs cremated under questionable circumstances, and a stack of forged documents in evidence, it’s safe to say this case won’t rest in peace any time soon.