Hammer attack on body parts

An unemployed university lecturer told how he used a claw hammer to smash a preserved human corpse "to smithereens" to show his outrage at a controversial exhibition.

Geoff Lee, 51, hacked at the exhibit called The Organ Man after becoming "incandescent with rage" as he watched a father show his five-year-old daughter round the Body Worlds show at The Atlantis Gallery in the East End.

Speaking after being charged with criminal damage, Mr Lee, of Islington, said: "I sat up last night thinking about how to do this. I decided I would walk into the exhibition with a hammer and smash up the most expensive exhibit to make the point that you cannot turn bodies into commercial exhibits."

Today the show's creator, German professor Gunther von Hagens, 58, branded the attack "sheer vandalism".

He said: "No incident like this has ever happened at Body Worlds before, and eight million people have visited the exhibition. I am especially upset that it happened here in the UK - a country I believe to be the birthplace of liberalism.

"I think this act of vandalism on one of the bodies is akin to desecration of graves. Those who choose to leave their bodies in a permanent place of enlightenment should be respected as much as those who choose a more traditional resting place."

But Mr Lee said he knew he had to act when he saw the man showing his young daughter round. "I was enraged that he was capable of inflicting that horrific exhibition on an innocent child. I smashed up one of them to smithereens. It's not easy to hit a hammer-through a dead body and it took some doing. Within moments some of the other people at the exhibition jumped on me and the police were called. I did not resist them because I merely wanted to make a point. I never intended to hurt anybody."

Mr Lee, who intends to defend himself in court, added: "I want a trial and I admit I smashed the exhibit, but my case is that you cannot commit criminal damage on a human body. I believe a British jury will agree with me.

"I never believed in such a thing as evil until I saw human bodies had been turned into commercial objects. I feel no guilt about ruining the piece. I am simply astonished that eight million people are supposed to have seen the exhibition across the world and nobody has done this before me."

He was released late last night after being held at Bethnal Green Police Station after the attack at 1pm.

Pete Cank, who witnessed the attack, said: "He took a hammer out and just started laying into it, saying it was an obscenity. Little kids stood round the back of it where it fell over - they only just got out of the way."

The Body Worlds exhibition has had 6,500 visitors since it opened last Saturday. However the show of 25 posed corpses and 175 human anatomical specimens has been criticised by some as insensitive.

Relatives of victims of the Alder Hey scandal even asked the Government to block Body Worlds opening in London.

Taking art right to the limit
Gallery: Corpse close-ups
Have your say: is it art?
Not even par for the corpse
Comment: Moved by mother and child