SEATTLE -- King County has failed to settle legal claims in connection with it's now-defunct brain harvesting program.

As a result, three lawsuits, potentially costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, are heading to Superior Court.

Last March, KIRO Team 7 Investigators first exposed how coroners traded brains of mentally ill corpses to a private lab, at times without obtaining proper consent. Financial records uncovered by KIRO-TV also proved the county profited more than a million dollars on the arrangement.

Investigative Reporter Chris Halsne found among the families suing: A Bellevue couple who saw our investigation on TV, then found out their son's brain was allegedly sold.

KIRO Team 7 investigators have acquired potentially damaging e-mails that could be used against the medical examiner during trial.

MORE ON THIS STORY Text Of Agreement Between Stanley Institute, King County M. E. [pdf file] Money Paid To King County M.E.'s Office By Stanley Institute E-mail From County Official Regarding Legality Of Agreement State Law Regarding Consent E-mail link to King County Health Director Alonzo Plough, who oversees M.E.'s Office (and KIRO Team 7 Investigators)

Virginia Hendricks can't help but feel betrayed. Just a few days after her son Jim died unexpectedly, the King County Medical Examiner's office called, asking to take a sample of her son's brain. Instead, without permission, the county sent Jim's entire brain, plus his mental health and medical history files to the Stanley Medical Institute in Bethesda Maryland.

Hendricks says, “It was unbelievable. It's one of those things, you shake your head and say how could they do that? Why would they do it?”

KIRO Team 7 Investigators discovered invoices between Stanley and the Medical Examiner that totaled $1,490,000 over ten years; money paid in exchange for what turned out to be around 200 brains.

According to her lawsuit, Hendricks says King County illegally, wrongfully and without consent removed her son's brain. She told KIRO Team 7 Investigators, “I think they should have to pay in some way. Do jail time. If I don't get a cent, they do jail time.”

The sister of a homeless, mentally ill man named Bradley Gierlich is suing King County as well. In a lawsuit filed late Friday, the family claims nobody ever gave permission to harvest organs. Bradley Gierlich's brain was sent to Stanley medical by King County anyway.

Robinette Amaker vs. King County, Stanley Medical Research Institute and E. Fuller Torrey

The suit accuses King County and Stanley Medical of outrage, negligence, violation of privacy, interference with a dead body, violations of the Washington Anatomical Gift Act, and civil conspiracy.

Another lawsuit, being filed by a Bellevue family who’s young son's brain was taken as a "test" subject, says they never consented to the deal either.

County attorneys have also been busy over the past few months blocking public records requests filed by KIRO Team 7 Investigators regarding the Stanley project. We've received dozens of blank pages of e-mails between medical examiner staff (notes passed shortly after we started airing our investigation). They claim if we saw what was printed on them, it would compromise their legal case.

Despite the blockade, KIRO Team 7 Investigators did obtain by other means several e-mails that shed light on why the county was interested in profiting from the brains research.

A 2002 e-mail, written by the Medical Examiner office manager says: "As you know they county (h)as asked Public Health to take a reduction in CX (county funded dollars).. One of the goals I would want in 2003 is to expand that outside funding to rely less on CX dollars."

That year the county collected a record amount of money for brains from Stanley $203,908.

Hendricks says profiting from the brain trade was not the way the county should be funding programs, adding, “I have felt really sickened by it. It just has been very upsetting that they did this.”

The King County Prosecutor's office declined to comment on the series of lawsuits, but that office will be in charge of defending the medical examiner and taxpayers in court.