Is That A Sex Doll Inside Your Body Bag?

MAY 30--Investigators charge that a funeral home worker planned to use a body bag to smuggle a life-size sex doll out of the home of a man who died in his Nebraska residence, according to court records.

Ryan Smith, 42, was arrested in October for allegedly breaking into the Omaha apartment where the deceased man lived. At the time, Smith worked for Mid America First Call, which handles “removals, transportation, embalming, cremations, and ship-outs.”

As detailed in recent court filings, Smith and a coworker were dispatched to the Rock Creek Apartments to collect the decedent’s body. Inside the unit, a sheriff’s deputy noted, “Near the body on the bed was a very real life size version of an adult female.”

“Both of the males that came to collect the body made comments about the sex doll found on location,” according to an arrest affidavit. Smith’s initial entry into the apartment was with law enforcement personnel, who subsequently locked and secured the home.

Later that day, Smith allegedly returned to the residence carrying a body bag, telling apartment complex staff that he was acting on behalf of the sheriff’s office and “wished to collect the ‘sex doll’ located inside the deceased tenant’s apartment for evidentiary purposes.” Additionally, he told workers that he was there to “collect a stretcher he claimed that was left behind.”

After Smith (seen above) was let into the apartment a second time, a management official discovered the unit’s front door was “deadbolted and latched with the chain across the door.” The complex representative confronted Smith--whose “shirt was untucked and his pants were in disarray”--and told him that no property could be removed from the dead man’s home.

As he was leaving the Rock Creek development a second time, Smith reportedly asked a janitor “when the Manager of the apartment building left.” The manager told cops that she “feared [Smith] was going to return to the complex and break in and steal the doll.”

Details about Smith’s actions are contained in a judicial order filed last week denying his motion challenging a probable cause finding that he committed attempted burglary.

A District Court judge found that Smith “unlawfully entered the apartment with a body bag, which is indicative based on circumstantial evidence, that he had the intent to take the ‘sex doll,’ an item of nominal value. Therefore, the Court finds that Defendant committed a substantial step and a course of conduct intended to culminate in the commission of burglary.”

A date for the next court appearance by Smith, who is free on bond, has not been scheduled. (8 pages)