UCI Probe Shifts to Ex-Director’s Wife

Among companies that did business with UC Irvine’s scandal-tainted Willed Body Program is one owned by the wife of the program’s fired director, who is the focus of a conflict-of-interest probe, a university official said Friday.

UCI and the Orange County district attorney’s office are investigating whether Christopher S. Brown, 27, steered university business to companies with which he had financial ties.

One of the companies with which Brown did business was Osteoplastics, according to Richard T. Robertson, chairman of the school’s department of anatomy and neurobiology. State records show the company is owned by Brown’s wife, Venus Mikulich, and is based in the couple’s Tustin condominium. Brown never disclosed that his wife owned Osteoplastics, Robertson said.

Robertson said he believes Brown did not sign a formal contract with Osteoplastics but gave the company work repairing human and model skeletons over the last year. While it remains unclear how much money the company received, Robertson said the anatomy department had up to $6,000 to spend on such repairs.

Brown and his wife could not be reached for comment Friday, but their attorney, Stephen Warren Solomon, said the couple may sue the university for defamation.

“All I can tell you is that the university is going to end up paying a lot of money to that young man,” Solomon said. He declined to discuss details about the allegations.

UCI’s program receives about 75 cadavers a year for use in scientific research and often sends bodies to other colleges and hospitals in return for a preparation fee.

In addition to the conflict-of-interest allegations, district attorney and campus officials are investigating whether body parts were sold illegally and whether cremated remains were mishandled.

Brown, who was fired effective Friday, has denied any wrongdoing. In an earlier interview with The Times, Brown said he once owned an interest in a transportation company that carried cadavers and body parts to other institutions for UCI. He dropped his part-ownership, Brown said, when he realized it posed a conflict of interest.

Investigators also are examining how a private tutoring company, whose owner once had business ties to Brown, managed to hold anatomy classes for premedical students in the Willed Body Program laboratory. Two university cadavers were dissected during the classes, a university spokeswoman said Friday.

Robertson acknowledged that poor oversight of Brown contributed to the program’s problems. But while Robertson had to give final approval for all the program’s business contracts, it was Brown’s job as director to decide how to award them, Robertson said.

He said he kept out of the day-to-day business of the program and now regrets doing so.

“We don’t know all the details . . . but he has to be accountable for his choices. I’m accountable for mine,” Robertson said. “I hired him, and I chose to manage the Willed Body Program as I did, which is to let the director manage.”

Staff writers Kate Folmar and Peter M. Warren contributed to this story.