During a police raid on his clinic in February 2010, officers discovered 47 fetuses, some wrapped in bags and kept in a freezer, along with body parts stored in jars, including tiny feet he had severed and preserved. Gosnell routinely performed abortions past Pennsylvania's 24-week limit, and one patient, Karnamaya Mongar, a 41-year-old immigrant from Bhutan, died during a procedure at his clinic. Mongar was driven to his clinic because she was past the 14-week limit for abortions in Virginia.
The investigation into Gosnell's practices originated after Philadelphia police began looking into claims he was selling prescriptions fueling the city's illegal opioid trade. He was originally charged with eight counts of murder, but some cases were dropped, and he had been moved around the prison system over nearly 13 years since his conviction, most recently incarcerated at the State Correctional Institution-Smithfield. The cause of Gosnell's death has not been confirmed, and it remains unclear how many of the original eight murder charges were dropped or what specific violations of Pennsylvania's abortion laws he was convicted of beyond the murder and manslaughter counts.