Some 100 Preserved Brains Lost From Texas University Including Murderer's

University of Texas loses 100 brain specimens after they are found to be missing from psychology department.

MOSCOW, December 3 (Sputnik) — The University of Texas in Austin discovered that half of their brains collection has disappeared. About 100 brains specimens are missing from university’s laboratory collection. The brains were preserved in jars of formaldehyde, since Austin State Hospital had transferred them to the university about 28 years ago for temporary keeping, reports AP.

Psychology Professor Tim Schallert, co-curator of the collection said his psychology lab had a room for only 100 brains, so the rest of them were placed to the basement in the university's Animal Resources Center.

"We think somebody may have taken the brains, but we don't know at all for sure. They are no longer in the basement," he told AP.

His co-curator, psychology Professor Lawrence Cormack, said, "It's entirely possible word got around among undergraduates and people started swiping them for living rooms or Halloween pranks."

One of the brains that are missing is believed to have belonged to a mass murderer Charles Whitman.

Whitman, an architectural engineering student and former Marine sharpshooter, shot and killed 14 people and wounded another 31 from the University of Texas tower in 1966 before an Austin police officer killed him. Whitman had also killed his wife and mother the night before.