Red Sox Legend Ted Williams Was Decapitated and Frozen For Eternity

Back in 2002, Ted Williams' kids had the deceased Red Sox legend's head removed from his body and frozen in liquid nitrogen, but did they choose the same fate for themselves?

Phil Devitt reported on Thursday's Michael and Maddie show that the final child of the Boston sports icon passed away. Claudia Franc Williams, who spearheaded the effort to have her father's body forever preserved in liquid nitrogen, died back in December 2023. Her family wished to mourn the 52-year-old's death privately before releasing the news to the press this week.

Williams found herself front and center in a worldwide story after she and her brother went against the wishes of their half-sister and had their father's head removed and stored separately from the body in liquid nitrogen. The practice is called cryonics, and the hope is that at some time in the distant future, there will be technology made available to bring the slugger back to life once again.

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It sounds like the beginning of a movie thriller, but my morning show cohost Maddie and producer Gazelle were shocked to learn that the story was true. Although there are similar claims that Walt Disney had his body frozen, those claims have been deemed false by Snopes.

After the baseball star died in 2002, his children each presented signatures from their famous dad declaring conflicting methods to deal with his corpse. Williams' oldest daughter, Bobby-Jo Williams, said at the time that her father wanted to be cremated with his ashes scattered off the coast of Florida, where the former big leaguer adored fishing.

READ MORE: How Ted Williams Became the Face of the Roger Williams Statue

However, Claudia and her brother John Henry apparently produced a more recent document demonstrating their father had signed off on the idea of cryonics.  Their father's body was subsequently flown out to Arizona where the procedure took place.

According to CBS News, "The operation was completed and Williams' head and body were preserved separately. The head is stored in a steel can filled with liquid nitrogen. It has been shaved, drilled with holes and accidentally cracked 10 times... Williams' body stands upright in a 9-foot tall cylindrical steel tank, also filled with liquid nitrogen."  The cost of the procedure was $136,000.

Six months after her death, there is no word about whether or not Claudia Williams' chose the same fate for her own body.  However, she maintained to the very end that the decision to implement cryonics was made with love.

“I can tell you that my family chose cryonics out of love," she told The Boston Globe.

In her 2014 memoir, Ted Williams, My Father, she wrote: "No one would spend over $100,000 and subject themselves to public outrage and ridicule for someone they don’t dearly love. There was no ill intent or devious plan. ... [Cryonics] was like a religion. Something we could have faith in.”