It is now appearing that the 100 or so human brains missing from a University of Texas at Austin collection were destroyed in 2002. According to a statement from the university, the brains were disposed of in accordance with biological waste protocols, after faculty members determined that they were in too poor a condition to be used for teaching or research.

The brains had been obtained during autopsies of mental patients from as far back as the 1950s. The missing brains were received from the psychiatric facility Austin State Hospital 28 years ago, and made up about half of the university collection. The brains had been highly sought after from other research universities.

Jerry Fineg, a former director of the university’s Animal Resources Center where the collection had been stored said he thought the missing brains had been returned to the State Hospital some time in the mid-1990s, because they were taking up too much room. However, co-curator Tim Schallert said that he never sent them. Then it was thought that they had been located at another school. Then it came out that they had been destroyed.

The collection of approximately 200 human brains was on loan from the Austin State Hospital. Some university staff members believe that the brains had gone missing from their basement storage area over many years. Schallert’s co-curator Lawrence Cormack thought the brains might have been taken over the years as a prank. However, university spokesman Gary Susswein said that as far as he knows all the missing brains have been accounted for with the disposal of 40 to 60 jars of specimens.

Not everyone is buying it. Alex Hannaford, co-author of the book Malformed: Forgotten Brains of the Texas State Mental Hospital, said that the jars were designed to hold only one brain each, so the number of jars disposed of does not match the number of brains missing.

Some of the interest in the missing brains stems from the belief that one of them belonged to Charles Whitman, a former Marine who waged a sniper attach from the top of the University of Texas Tower in 1966 that killed 16 people and wounded 32 more. In a note left behind Whitman had requested that an autopsy of his brain be performed to investigate his suspected mental illness. The autopsy showed a 5-centimeter tumor, but no link was established to his mental illness.

The current case of missing brains is not the first. Last year David Charles was charged with stealing 60 human brains from the Indiana Medical History Museum. Most were returned to the museum after a tip to police from a man who had purchased six of them on eBay and suspected they were stolen. One collection of 600 brains known to be held in Philadelphia simply vanished.

University of Massachusetts professor Brian Burrell says that disposing of such a collection can be awkward. Brain collections can date back to the mid-1800s, and sometimes institutions do not even know that they have them. Selling human remains can be difficult, and it may not be possible to even give them away.

UT has not yet confirmed reports that one of the missing brains is Whitman’s. In fact, Susswein told the Los Angeles Times that there is really no evidence that the University ever got Whitman’s brain at all.