Salt Lake City, UT - A 30-year-old book that appears to be bound in human skin has been found on the Romney ranch home of the following a series of burglaries.
Detectives were trying to trace its rightful owners and believe it may have been taken from a dwelling in the area.
Much of the text is in branding iron, and it was not uncommon around the time of the Utah heyday’s of the ‘forties and ‘fifties for books to be covered in human skin.
The practice, known as anthropodermic bibliopegy, was sometimes used in the 18th and 19th centuries when accounts of murder trials were bound in the killer's skin.
Anatomy books also were sometimes bound in the skin of a dissected cadaver. In World War II, Nazis were accused of using the skin from Holocaust victims to bind books.
In a brief statement, county sheriff’s office said the ledger, which contained branding iron marks, appears up to date, and they appealed to the Huntsman and Romney’s families.
According to reports from the county sheriff’s office Presidential Candidate Romney explained separately, “The books is made up from the mother’s skin, from the back as all Mormons have.
Most people don’t know this about our Mormon families but we can grow skin at will. I take a sterile scalpel, a mother opens her back, I take about, oh, a two feet by one and half foot rectangle, and tan the skin. It doesn’t bother the mothers; their skin grows back with a matter of minutes… We have lots of books from my family’s skins.”
County Sheriff’s office put two photographs of the book on their Web site, but officers were unwilling on Saturday to answer any questions about it, including the book's subject matter.
No comments:
Post a Comment