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Police have found body parts in his home. But those who know him agree: Joseph Warner has an extraordinary mind.
By CARRIE JOHNSON, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published August 30, 2002
They were introduced by friends, and Kimberly Mitchell was immediately attracted to the shy doctor's brilliant mind.
"He had an IQ of 207," she said. "I kept pleading with him until he finally told me."
Mitchell was so taken with neurologist Dr. Joseph Warner that she uprooted her life in Memphis, Tenn., and drove more than 700 miles to move in with him.
Nothing could have prepared her for what she found inside his Gainesville home: Fifteen brains stored in containers around the house and an overpowering smell of formaldehyde.
"It was a hellhole," said Mitchell, 35. "I went into the kitchen and, I'm going, "There's a head here in the kitchen. Get it out!' "
For all his intelligence, Mitchell said, her former fiance was a deeply troubled man, a view shared by many of Warner's friends and former co-workers.
On Thursday, as a more complete portrait of the former University of Florida professor emerged, police searched Warner's Lake City laboratory and found even more missing brains and spines.
Gainesville Police Cpl. Keith Kameg said labeling on the parts found during the afternoon raid on the Neurological Sciences Center led authorities to believe they belong to UF and to Warner's former place of employment, the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Lake City.
Kameg said the VA Inspector General has been called in to assist with the inquiry.
Warner was arrested early Tuesday after his wife, Debra J. Warner, called Gainesville police to report he punched her in the face and pushed her into a glass wall unit.
When police arrived, they found heads, brains and spines preserved in the house. A shoulder with the arm attached was discovered in a plastic storage container in the garage.
Warner was charged with one count each of misdemeanor domestic battery and illegally storing body parts. He was released from the Gainesville jail Wednesday after posting $5,000 bail.
Warner was fired Tuesday by the University of Florida, where he worked as a courtesy professor of neuroanatomy since 1990.
Warner's lawyer, Assistant Public Defender Johnny Kearns, could not be reached for comment Thursday.
Mitchell said she was engaged to Warner from August 2000 to October 2001. She said he became verbally abusive after she moved to Florida.
"I remember writing in my prayer journal, "Please, Lord, let this be a day that we don't fight,' " she said.
The body parts were a constant nuisance. One bedroom became known as the "head room," where Warner would store his preserved heads, one still sporting a mustache, Mitchell said.
Debra Warner told the Gainesville Sun that her husband stored, underneath the sink, a severed head that he named "Fester," after a character in The Addams Family.
Mitchell said she believed Warner, who suffers from a spinal condition, abused painkillers. When she mentioned her concern to a therapist they saw together, Warner flew into a rage and told her to leave his house.
"Within nine days, I was gone," Mitchell said.
Charles Thomas, a Citrus County dentist who attended UF medical school with Warner in the late 1970s, likened him to Dr. John Nash, the schizophrenic genius profiled in the movie A Beautiful Mind.
"He was brilliant, extraordinarily brilliant," Thomas said. "But his social graces were minimal."
Warner was an expert photographer and a talented artist, Thomas said. He also had a somewhat macabre sense of humor: When plants were being stolen from houses around Gainesville, Warner hung two bountiful baskets of poison ivy outside his home.
But Warner never joked in the classroom.
"I was really in awe of his incredible ability to learn material," Thomas said. "I think he had a photographic mind."
As the police investigation continues, Warner could face additional charges. Kameg said Gainesville police spent Thursday continuing to log and videotape the evidence found within Warner's home.
"We are in a position where we're going to have to prove something beyond a reasonable doubt," Kameg said. "We have to do it right."
-- Carrie Johnson can be reached at (352) 860-7309 or cjohnson@sptimes.com.