Indiana Attorney General completes investigation into thousands of fetal remains found at residence in 2019

The office of the Indiana Attorney General released a 26 page report including an additional 35 pages of exhibits on Monday, December 28 at the conclusion of a more than year long investigation into the discovery of 2,411 fetal remains in September 2019.

After dying of natural causes at the age of 79, Dr. Ulrich Klopfer was found to have thousands of remains of aborted babies and medical records located in the garage next to his home in Will County, Illinois, with still more found in the trunk of his vehicle with thousands more medical records.

Dr. Klopfer's medical license was suspended indefinitely in 2016 after he was brought up on criminal charges related to his failure to report abortions that he had preformed in 2014 on two 13-year-old girls to law enforcement.  Under state law, he was required to report these abortions within three days.

He additionally faced multiple licensing issues related to poor record keeping and failure to provide appropriate anesthesia to patients.

The Indy Star reports that the licensing board alleged Dr. Klopfer had admitted to performing an abortion at an undetermined time earlier in his career on a girl that was 10-years-old who had been raped.  He failed to report the abortion and the rape to the proper authorities.

During the time he worked as an abortionist, Dr. Klopfer is said to have preformed "tens of thousands of abortions at his clinics in South Bend, Fort Wayne, and Gary, Indiana."

The investigation into the remains and medical records found at his residence determined that they related to a period of time between 2000 and 2003.

In the end, after searching any property tied to Dr. Klopfer, "hundreds of thousands of health records... were found abandoned in the former clinic locations, storage units, and another garage."

"The OAG's investigation has revealed that Dr. Klopfer failed to make arrangements for the appropriate disposition of patient health records or notify his patients regarding their records from his closed medical practice."  Additionally, "Dr. Klopfer failed to effectuate the proper disposition of the fetal remains as required by Indiana law."

Based on the state of the remains and accompanying medical records, investigators were not able to independently verify the identities of the remains.  "Accordingly, the Attorney General provided for all 2,411 fetal remains to be interred in a respectful and dignified manner in accordance with state law."

In the forward to the report, AG Curtis T. Hill Jr., stated "This case exemplifies the need for strong laws to ensure the dignified disposition of fetal remains, like those passed by the Indiana General Assembly in 2016 and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2019."

“No one is believed to have assisted Dr. Klopfer in his actions, and because Dr. Klopfer is dead, he cannot be charged with a crime or with medical misconduct,” Hill was quoted as saying before adding that he “does not recommend any criminal charges or licensing actions in this case.”

Days after the discovery of the fetuses, a documentary film-maker spoke with CBS 2 in Chicago about an interview he had conducted with Dr. Klopfer just 10 months before his death.

“I like to put it this way – the gospel according to George Klopfer goes like this: ‘In the beginning, the Americans bombed my home.’ Everything else has been dictated by that as his worldview,” Mark Archer told Cris Tye at the time. "We didn’t ask him about it. He made a point of bringing it up.”

“Let me put it this way, in 1945 I was with my aunt, in the suburbs of Dresden,” Dr. Klopfer said in the documentary clip. “In February of 1945, in between the Americans and the English, they firebombed Dresden for three days and two nights.”

"The house across the street from us was destroyed in the bombing," Dr. Klopfer says, continuing with, "most of that family got killed."

He goes on to say that, "After the Berlin Wall fell down and Germany reunited, in 1994, they decided to rebuild the women’s church,” Dr. Klopfer said. “In the basement, they found dead bodies from World War II, OK?”

While the motive behind Dr. Klopfer hording the remains and medical records will never be fully known, he did say in the interview that "the effects of the war probably may have not had a positive inspect on my perception, OK?"

Archer is heard asking off-camera, "On your perspective of what?"

"Oh human beings; what they do to each other," Dr. Klopfer answered.

The documentary, Ironwood Drive, named for the street where Dr. Klopfer's Fort Wayne abortion clinic was, had been scheduled to be released in 2019.  Due to the discovery, the documentary was sent back to production in order to add additional information.  It was released in March of this year and is available on Amazon Prime.