Doctor says abortionist Ulrich Klopfer was like 'Hannibal Lecter'
A doctor who volunteered to be the backup physician for Ulrich Klopfer in an effort to save a Patient Safety Ordinance in Allen County, Indiana, says the late abortionist was “pathological” and compared him to the fictional character Hannibal Lecter.
Dr. Geoffrey Cly, an OBGYN who worked alongside pro-life advocates to create the ordinance, said he did so because he was treating an alarming number of women at the hospital who were suffering complications from botched abortions performed by Klopfer.
Klopfer ran three abortion clinics in the cities of Gary, South Bend and Fort Wayne until his medical license was indefinitely suspended in August 2016. Cly served as Klopfer's backup physician for three years at his clinic in Fort Wayne.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Cly was interviewed by CBS' Chicago affiliate on Tuesday about his experiences with Klopfer. At the Fort Wayne clinic, Cly said he witnessed bad practices and described Klopfer as having exhibited bizarre behaviors. But he said the news that Klopfer stored 2,246 aborted babies in his garage was “shocking."
"Taking some tissue, and in this case fetal tissue, home and saving them was just something that never should be done,” Cly said. “That is in the realm of extreme pathological behavior, which would be like Hannibal Lecter in the movie." He said it was also odd because it was methodical, unlike Klopfer's haphazard practices at his clinic.
Cly went on to call Klopfer “deranged,” and said he felt “there’s an element of trophies” in Klopfer’s decision to keep the preserved remains.
“He left them in his garage, not in an unmarked storage shed that he could’ve paid cash for under a different name. I think there’s a sign that he wants more to be discovered,” Cly added.
In 2011, Klopfer and Allen County reached a settlement over his legal complaint against the Patient Safety Ordinance that was filed on his behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana and the Center for Reproductive Rights. They argued that the ordinance was an effort to shut down the Fort Wayne Women's Health abortion clinic because it required out-of-town abortionists to have a backup doctor who would treat local patients if they suffered complications. Klopfer wasn't able to find a physician to be his backup, so Cly volunteered.
The settlement allowed the enforcement of multiple provisions in the ordinance, including the condition that Klopfer's patients have access to a local physician and an "emergency contact ... to ensure adequate follow-up care."
Lila Rose founder of the pro-life group Live Action, told The Christian Post that the case of Ulrich Klopfer "confirms what we always knew to be true: Kermit Gosnell was the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the abortion industry."
The group noted on its website that abortionist Michael Roth "also kept body parts of his aborted victims. In other words, Klopfer isn’t the only abortionist with a penchant for collecting body parts of his victims.”
Investigators said they have not found a motive that explains why Klopfer stored the babies' remains on his property.
Filmmaker Mark Archer, who made a documentary about Klopfer's Fort Wayne abortion clinic titled "Inwood Drive," has said in interviews that the late abortionist's story always begins with his life in Germany during World War II.
“I like to put it this way — the gospel according to George Klopfer goes like this: ‘In the beginning, the Americans bombed my home.’ Everything else has been dictated by that as his worldview,” Archer told CBS' affiliate in an interview broadcast Wednesday.
Archer told Christian Talk Radio in August that one of Klopfer's abortion patients that Cly treated at the hospital was "a 20-year-old girl who had so many complications from a botched abortion she had to have a hysterectomy and could never have children after that."
Klopfer, who died on Sept. 2, garnered national headlines earlier this month when his family made the grisly discovery of 2,246 aborted remains stored inside 70 cardboard boxes stacked from floor to ceiling in his garage.
