Updated: October 2, 2009, 10:05 AM EDT
Workers at a cryonics facility mutilated the frozen head of Hall of Fame baseball player Ted Williams, the author of a new book alleges.
In "Frozen," Larry Johnson, a former executive at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz., describes how Williams' frozen head was repeatedly abused, the New York Daily News reported.
The book due out Tuesday alleges gruesome behavior at the facility, where bodies are kept suspended in liquid nitrogen in case future generations learn how to revive them.
Johnson writes that in July 2002, shortly after the legendary slugger died at age 83, technicians with no medical certification used crude equipment to decapitate the majors' last .400 hitter. Williams' severed head was then frozen, and even used for batting practice by a technician trying to dislodge it from a tuna fish can, according to the book.
Johnson was the chief operating officer for eight months before becoming a whistleblower in 2003. He said he wired himself with an audio recorder for his last three months at Alcor, and gathered internal records and photographs reproduced in the book.
The paper says the book details other incidents at Alcor, including the dismemberment of live dogs that were injected with chemicals in experiments. It also details suspicious circumstances involving the bodies of others frozen in steel cylinders at Alcor.