“The Kidney Heist” is an urban legend that originated in the 1990s and has transformed into many different versions since that time. It bears many of the hallmarks typical of urban legends, and both its longevity and its wide reach have ensured it a place in modern folklore.
The first reports of “The Kidney Heist” are from around 1991 and are typically gruesome and seem possible enough to be believed. The basic version was circulated via photocopy, fax, and word-of-mouth. The story features a traveler, usually a man on a business trip, who goes to a lounge to have a drink and relax. At the lounge, another customer offers to buy the man a drink. Shortly after that, the man blacks out. He awakens the next morning in a hotel room with a headache and discovers blood on the sheets of the bed. He also finds a stitched-up incision in his side. Later, at a hospital, he is informed that he has had a kidney very professionally removed—most likely for sale on the black market.
An attempt is made to make the story even more believable by adding false details, such as the name of an officer who issued the warning to travelers or the claim that the story was heard from “a very close friend.” A later version adds a colleague who is traveling with the victim. This time, the victim is married and the person who drugs him is a woman whom he wants to take back to his hotel room. On the morning they are to depart for home, the victim’s colleague receives a call from the distraught victim and, with the help of the police, they locate him in a hotel room and get him to the hospital.
Both early versions of the tale feature an admonition against the perils of alcohol and the second version delves deeper into being a morality tale since it features the theme of adultery. Many of the versions take place in big cities and play upon fears of traveling to unknown places and violation of the body, as well as evoking distrust of strangers. A New Orleans version of the myth, which emerged in 1997, prompted more than a hundred calls to the police department and forced them to actively combat the misinformation by posting a response on the Internet.
The legend became very popular with the rise of the Internet, and email ensured a much wider and more rapid distribution. The Internet version typically became more gruesome and attempted to inspire more fear. The hints of an extramarital affair were dropped, making it seem as though it could happen even to the innocent. The setup was the same except in this version the victim wakes up in a tub of ice. Next to the tub is a phone and a note reading, “If you want to live, call 911.” When the victim calls, the operator asks the victim to reach down and see if there was a drainage tube in his back. After confirmation, the operator tells the victim that he is the victim of a ring of organ thieves and both kidneys have been removed.
Popular culture has used the legend to its advantage. In 1991, the crime drama Law and Order (NBC) ran an episode in which a supposed mugging victim had had a kidney removed. Las Vegas (NBC) also featured a similar episode. It has made appearances in the movies The Harvest (1993), Urban Legend (1998), and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001) and has shown up in numerous books.
There is a small basis in fact that may have led to the creation of this urban legend. In 1989, a Turkish man, Ahmet Koc, claimed that he had been lured to England with a job offer and given an injection under the guise of taking a blood test. When he awoke he discovered that his kidney had been taken. He was later exposed as a fraud after a classified ad was discovered in a Turkish newspaper where Koc had offered his organ for sale. There are a few claims from India that doctors have been arrested for taking kidneys from unwilling or unsuspecting victims.
No victim of such a crime has ever come forward. The likelihood of someone actually being able to remove an organ outside of an operating room and sell it is remarkably slight. A great deal of medical expertise is required to harvest a viable organ, let alone match one to a recipient. It is also illegal to harvest and sell organs even from a willing party.
James J. Heiney
See also Internet Hoaxes; Relative’s Cadaver, The; Urban Legends/Urban Belief Tales
Further Reading
Barber, Mark. 2007. Urban Legends: Uncovered: An Investigation into the Truth behind the Myths. Kent Town, S. Australia: Wakefield Press.
De Vos, Gail. 2012. What Happens Next?: Contemporary Urban Legends and Popular Culture. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.
Roeper, Richard. 1999. Urban Legends: The Truth behind All Those Deliciously Entertaining Myths That Are Absolutely, Positively, 100% Not True! Franklin Lakes, NJ: Career Press.