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CNN Live Today

Family of Ted Williams Fights Over Body

Aired July 08, 2002 - 11:05   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: The family of legendary slugger Ted Williams is fighting over his body. You see, his daughter is going to court today to try and get his remains out of an Arizona cryonics laboratory. She's claiming that her stepbrother had Williams' body moved there, where it's going to be frozen, if it isn't frozen already by now. She says that he wants to sell their dad's DNA. The cryonics lab and Williams' son are refusing to talk about the situation. So we don't know what they have to say about it. Williams died Friday at the age of 83. And the word that we have now is that the baseball's hottest hitter is now on ice, literally.

Now, cryonics may sound like something right out of an "Austin Powers" movie, but freezing the body for future use is getting a lot of new attention. Reporter Mike Macklin, of WHDH, reports now from Hernando, Florida.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BOBBY JO FERRELL, TED WILLIAMS' DAUGHTER: And I pray that everybody is in arms -- up in arms. I really hope they are.

MIKE MACKLIN, REPORTER, WHDH: Ted Williams' daughter, Bobby Jo, appeals to her dad's friends and fans to come to his rescue.

FERRELL: This is just an immoral, wrong thing. It's a horrible thing that has to be righted.

MACKLIN: Williams' daughter said it was her father's wish to be cremated, his ashes spread in the Florida Keys, where he loved to fish. But she says her half-brother, Ted's only son, John Henry, decided to turn Ted's body over to a cryonics laboratory in Arizona to be frozen.

FERRELL: He said, well, you know, we can sell dad's DNA. And people will buy that, because they'd love to have little Ted Williamses. This is not even a science. This is insane. Stephen King would love to write about this. It's an insane thing.

MACKLIN: Bobby Jo says her half-brother John Henry Williams ostracized her in her dad's final years. It was friends who gave her the news that the baseball Hall of Famer she knew simply as Dad had died.

FERRELL: And they said, it's happening. They're packing your dad in ice in a big bag and they're pumping blood thinners through him. And he was dead when he got here. So I knew that was going to happen. John Henry never even called me to tell me my dad had died, never called me. He has not called yet.

MACKLIN: Showing us personal family photographs never before shared, Ted's daughter scoffs at the suggestion that she was estranged from her father. It was her half-brother, she says, who refused to let her see her dad in his final year as age and illness left him weak.

FERRELL: And I said, what do you mean I'm not going to be a part of the family any more? And he said, just what I said. And I said you can't do that to me. That's my dad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARRIS: All right. Thanks to Boston affiliate WHDH for that report.

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