The Audacity of Shawn Parcells

Where is the Line?

In 2009 a Kansas man named Shawn Parcells proudly began a forensic autopsy group that would eventually come to be known as National Autopsy Services. Since then, Parcells has performed thousands of autopsies on bodies for which the cause of death was called into question. In doing so, he’s provided countless heartbroken families with whatever peace can be found in finally discovering the truth of their loved ones' passings.

Shawn Parcells has testified in numerous court cases relating to jurors his findings on victims' causes of death and helping them to either convict and condemn or acquit and redeem those who stand accused of dissociating bodies from their souls.

Parcells has even found himself on CNN describing to Anderson Cooper his findings related to the police shooting of an unarmed black man named Michael Brown.

Shawn Parcells has provided peace of mind to grief-stricken families and has done the same for entire communities by way of local and national news interviews. He has given answers to seemingly unanswerable questions, and in the course of doing so has made himself the most recognizable dissector of human remains in Kansas City and throughout the rest of the midwest.

So, what’s the problem? The problem is that Shawn Parcells is not qualified to be doing any of this. How could this happen? Why was a man with no credentials allowed to prod the interiors of thousands of human remains? And how did he become so confidently prominent in a profession for which he was entirely unqualified?

That is the topic of this episode of Where is the Line?: The Goddamn Audacity of Shawn Fucking Parcells.