Ted Williams's will asked for his ashes to be scattered at sea, two of his children had him frozen in Arizona, and an ex-employee said his head was severed

Ted Williams, the Boston Red Sox hitter, died of cardiac arrest in Inverness, Florida, on 5 July 2002, aged 83. His will of 20 December 1996 asked that his ashes be "sprinkled at sea off the coast of Florida where the water is very deep." His son John-Henry and daughter Claudia had the body flown to the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona, and frozen. His eldest daughter, Barbara Joyce "Bobby-Jo" Ferrell, sued in Citrus County to have him cremated and accused John-Henry of planning to profit from the remains or sell his DNA. The children denied it. In July 2002 they gave the court a note dated 2 November 2000 and signed by all three: "JHW, Claudia and Dad all agree to be put into bio-stasis after we die." The family lawyer said John-Henry had kept it in his car trunk; it bore what looked like oil or grease stains. Autograph authenticator John Reznikoff said Ted's and John-Henry's signatures may have been written by one person. On 20 December 2002 Ferrell dropped her objections after a judge agreed to split a $645,000 trust equally among the three children. She had spent $87,000. In August 2003 Sports Illustrated, citing former Alcor executive Larry Johnson, reported that the head had been severed from the body. Alcor's chief executive, Jerry Lemler, told the magazine: "We do not acknowledge that Ted Williams is a patient." John-Henry died of leukemia in March 2004, aged 35, and was believed to be an Alcor patient. In June 2004 the Ferrells settled with the estate and ended their effort to remove the remains, after spending close to $100,000. In 2009 Johnson's book "Frozen" alleged that an Alcor official struck the frozen head with a monkey wrench. Alcor denied it and sued Johnson and his publisher in New York, where Judge James Yates refused on 5 October 2009 to block the book. Ferrell died in 2010. Claudia, who wrote in 2014 that "my family chose cryonics out of love," died in December 2023.