Who is Dr Gloves?

They say everything has its limit, but I never fully believed that to be true. I saw no limit to the greed of corporate executives, the corruption of politicians, or the depravity of 4chan users. The supposed limits that existed in many people appeared to only exist in polite conversation. Thanks to the internet’s uncanny ability to put likeminded people together into their own echo chambers where they could speak freely, we learned that the extent of people’s debaucherous urges and prejudiced ideations seemed to know no bounds.

But it turns out I was wrong, there really might be a limit to everything. While 4chan always seemed happy to host numerous murderers, QAnon, and pictures of every illegal thing imaginable, they eventually met their match. And that is the subject of today’s episode. It’s something so horrific that all of the original posts by the user and subsequent discussions were scrubbed from the internet and its archives. Consider yourself warned.

Most of what remains are the secondhand retellings of exactly how everything went down originally, which means that some of the details might not be 100% accurate. But today is a good day to be listening as a podcast, because the other things that remain are the pictures. I don’t know how much our lovely video editor is going to share with the audience, but don’t worry Simon, I’m only going to show you two pictures; I’m sure that will be enough.

A Picture Is Worth 1000 Words

Like so many things, it all started with a post on 4chan. Because the original posts have been deleted, I can’t find the exact date on which this all began. All of the evidence seems to point to it having taken place sometime in 2017, and I can say for certain that it was no earlier than 2014.

There was no text added by the user with this or any of his other posts, and users on 4chan are usually all anonymous so there was no username either. The initial post was just a picture, with many more pictures to come. The man in the image was given the nickname Dr. Gloves because he could be seen wearing a pair of surgical gloves that went up to his elbows in most of the pictures.

The initial pictures appeared to be taken in some sort of hospital morgue. It was dirty and gross looking, but that’s actually pretty normal. These areas are off limits to patients and visitors, so they don’t get the sparkling renovations that main areas of hospitals often will because nobody is going to see it anyway.

For somebody working in such a location, Dr. Gloves’ attire mostly made sense. In addition to the gloves, he could be seen wearing either scrubs or a dress shirt and slacks. Occasionally he would also wear some protective suit thing that would be worn over the clothes to keep them clean. The use of surgical gloves instead of exam gloves was a bit odd as they are more expensive and probably not necessary for most of what he should be doing, but that wasn’t the most questionable part of his outfit.

Dr. Gloves wore a gimp mask. This was obviously to conceal his identity, but it still created a disturbing image. Some people referred to him by the alternate name of Master instead of Dr. Gloves, though that never stuck. Which makes sense, since it’s the sub not the Master that would be wearing a gimp mask anyway.

So what exactly could Dr. Gloves have been doing in this morgue that required him to conceal his identity, you ask? What else but playing with the corpses. Specifically, he posed and photographed himself while screwing around with and otherwise disrespecting stillborn and miscarried fetuses.

Through the power of image editing software, someone has been kind enough to cut the bodies out of the images. The two I’m going to show you are by far the most tame, but I promise you they got much worse. I know I don’t have to tell you this Simon, but for any curious viewers I strongly recommend against searching for the unedited images. I accidentally saw one while researching this and now I’ll never sleep again. Anyway, enjoy:

In the first image, we can see Dr. Gloves holding up a small, deceased body by pinching its neck. This was a common theme among these images, with about a half a dozen of them featuring bodies being held up with his hand around their throats.

The second image is hard to determine what it is from the edited version, but the three objects on that tray are small human brains. Internet sleuths who apparently have a lot of experience with brains compared the ones pictured with Dr. Gloves against various nonhuman animals, but none were the right size and shape.

Dr. Gloves had appeared out of nowhere to begin posting these images, and at first people went nuts. But not in the way they should have. While some users were disgusted, many people absolutely loved these images and wanted more. The pictures got reuploaded onto the now defunct site Death Addict that was dedicated to images of gore and death, where people also loved them.

Users posted all sorts of comments in support of Dr. Gloves, many of whom wanted him to do more. To some of these people, genuine pictures of dead bodies and organs were like porn. I’m sure at least some percentage of those comments were from edgy teenagers who wanted to sound cool but were actually vomiting from the graphic pictures, though sadly at least some of the comments were real.

The pictures continued to be posted, with some depicting Dr. Gloves tossing organs into the air and cutting into dead fetuses, but for the most part it was more of the same. Fans had wanted more, but not more of what they had already seen. They needed him to take things further, and so Dr. Gloves obliged. Just not in the way anybody was expecting.

After taking the users’ feedback into consideration, subsequent images featured him posing not with corpses, but with live children. The children all appeared to be developmentally challenged, and some may have even been comatose. The new series of pictures showed Dr. Gloves placing his gloved hands over their faces, and in one instance plugging a child’s nose with his fingers and seeming to cover their mouth.

Most of the children in these images were hooked up to breathing tubes or other medical devices, save for one. There was one girl in a pink shirt that was able to walk around freely, and she was the one that Dr. Gloves took the most pictures with.

He covered her face with his hand in one picture and grabbed the back of her head and appeared to press it against the wall in another. In possibly the most frightening one he seemed to be forcing her head into his crotch with one hand while his other was behind her head, holding open a plastic container with the set of X-acto knives he previously used to cut into the deceased bodies.

This time, people were not thrilled. Showing off and desecrating dead bodies was one thing, but abusing living children? That was much too far. These gore fans may have enjoyed videos of terrorists executing their enemies or graphic footage of people dying in accidents, but they still had their morals.

They also had some of the most creative and evocative insults I’ve seen, with one female user replying that she wanted to get a temporary dick transplant so she could skullfuck this sadistic piece of shit to death. Thanks to these new photo shoots depicting the abuse of disabled children, playtime was over. The gore community now had one singular goal in mind: dox the shit out of Dr. Gloves.

The Hunt for Dr. Gloves

Dr. Gloves vanished from the internet after his child abuse photos upset everyone, but people immediately got to work examining the pictures and trying to find any details they could use that might pinpoint his location. One of the first pieces of evidence was the presence of electric outlets in some of the pictures. Internet sleuths were able to easily identify that the building had to be in either the US or Canada based on the shape of the outlets. So what type of facility were they looking for?

The most obvious answer was a hospital, presumably a children’s hospital. The images taken in the morgue area made this pretty clear. Not only did Dr. Gloves have access to bodies, but markings on the wall indicated it was likely a reasonably large facility.

In the first photo I showed you, the number 37B appears on the wall above the fire extinguisher. The number 37 is often associated with fire codes and fire extinguishers, and 37B likely would have shown up on the map of the facility as the location of one of the extinguishers. Another image showed the numbers 329 with a biohazard symbol. The label was almost certainly partially obscured in the photo and actually said 3291, the code for medical waste.

It was pretty definitive that the morgue was part of a hospital. All of the children except the girl in the pink shirt had been hooked up to medical equipment, so they had to have been in a hospital setting as well. The only question was whether or not it was the same building; it was possible Dr. Gloves could have worked at two different facilities.

There were also the pictures of the girl in the pink shirt that looked like they may have been in a third location. In one photo in which a doorway is visible, the moulding around the doorway and the door catch both look like the types you would see in a private residence rather than a hospital or commercial building.

That room also used rocker light switches, those really long switches that basically look like buttons rather than a traditional light switch. This was another detail you wouldn’t expect to see in a hospital, nor would you expect to see what looked like a cable jack in the wall.

In the picture where the light switches were visible, it looked like Dr. Gloves was lifting the girl off the ground by her hair. I say that it looks like that in this instance because the floor isn’t actually visible.

It’s possible that these pictures may have been taken at his home with his daughter, and he was just having her pose with him for the pictures. If that was the case, she could have been standing on something for that photo. Given that all of the other pictures are all but confirmed to be authentic, there are only a couple reasons that I would even entertain these being staged as a possibility.

The first is that it seems unlikely Dr. Gloves could have lifted a child off the ground by their hair without her screams alerting anybody. That almost certainly makes it seem like these pictures had to be taken in a private residence rather than in the same hospital where the other children were.

She is also the only child whose face is never visible. Her back is to the camera in every photo except one, and in that one Dr. Gloves’ hand is covering her entire face. It’s possible that he didn’t want her identity to be seen and traced back to him, and that he just had her pose for some photos to make it seem like he was even more of a sick fuck than he already was.

It’s also sadly possible that both things are true and that she was his daughter in his home, but that the images were of him genuinely abusing her.

So we know that Dr. Gloves has access both to the morgue and to living child patients. This seems to highly suggest that he would have been a doctor. A mortician wouldn’t have been seeing living patients and a nurse wouldn’t have been spending enough time alone in the morgue to put on a gimp mask and take all of these pictures without being seen.

There was also some speculation that Dr. Gloves wasn’t medical staff at all, but rather that he was a janitor. Janitors would have access to nearly the entire hospital, including the morgue, and they’re generally viewed as being invisible. It would also explain the use of surgical gloves in nearly all the images. It doesn’t make sense to wear surgical gloves when just checking in on a patient who is hooked up to a ventilator or something.

But that may also have just been an aesthetic choice. He had worn them in the original pictures and was given the nickname Dr. Gloves, so maybe he felt that all the gore addicts wouldn’t like him anymore if he switched to more subdued exam gloves. There’s a lot more evidence that he was actually a doctor or physician instead of anything else. Aside from his access to both patients and the morgue, there was also his clothing.

In some pictures he was wearing scrubs, but in others he was wearing a dress shirt and fancy shoes. Wearing dress shirts is common for doctors, but not for pretty much any other members of hospital staff that would have had this level of access. People working in billing and stuff would certainly wear dress shirts, but they shouldn’t be able to get down to the morgue.

So Dr. Gloves was most likely an actual doctor somewhere in the US or Canada, but where? It seemed like it would be difficult to further narrow it down. The gloves worn were very common brands used by hospitals. The hospital linens that appeared in some of the images were manufactured by Medline which services over 10,000 hospitals in the United States, so it seemed like that was going to be a dead end as well.

However, when looking carefully at the linens used, somebody noticed a rather unusual pattern containing little orange elephants. They decided to search eBay and other resellers for people selling used linens with that pattern, and all of the sellers were in either California or Arizona. Further investigation revealed that Medline’s orange elephant blankets were used exclusively by Dignity Health hospitals in California and Arizona. The search had just been narrowed down from most of North America to only 39 hospitals.

People began focusing on more details to try to narrow down the exact hospital and Dr. Glove’s true identity. He had particularly hairy arms over which he pulled his size 6½ gloves. This was particularly noteworthy because that’s pretty small for a man wearing surgical gloves. Different sources claim different averages, but it seems that either 7 or 7½ is pretty standard for men. A size 6½ would either rip when most men tried to put them on or would cut off their circulation.

In addition to the hand size, they used the size of the doorframe and other equipment in the morgue to estimate Dr. Glove’s height at between 5’8-5’11”, but probably on the smaller end of that. It wasn’t a lot to go on, but it was something. With only 39 hospitals now, maybe they could make some headway on that front.

Research was done into what facilities each of the hospitals had. Not all of them would have had long term care facilities for disabled children, which narrowed it down quite a bit. Allegedly internet investigators even tracked down the blueprints of the hospitals to see which would match what little of the building’s layout was available in the images.

That may or may not be possible, as most blueprints are considered public records, but not all of them and it varies by jurisdiction. They may have just been using a simple floor plan or directory of the hospitals that people could use as a map, a “you are here” sort of thing to find where you need to go. Unfortunately, since all of the original discourse is gone there’s no way to know now which it was.

In either case, they were able to use these maps to narrow the hospital down to Glendale Memorial Health Foundation, a hospital run by Dignity Health in Glendale California. They were certain that they had found the right hospital, now all these meddling kids needed to do was pull the gimp mask off of their villain.

I know I said I was only going to show you two images, but there is one more we need to discuss. Don’t worry, I edited it so not even the outline of a body will be visible because that’s not what I need you to look at. I want to draw your attention to the computer in the background of this picture.

That laptop is an HP Stream Professional Laptop. It was released in 2014, which tells us that these were definitely new photos being taken and uploaded at the time rather than old horror photos from the 1980s or something. While it was a fairly common laptop that didn’t do anything to narrow down exactly what hospital this was, it was still strong evidence that…wait a minute, was Dr. Gloves wearing a fucking photo ID?

Yes, yes he was. The man that had gone through the trouble of wearing a gimp mask to conceal his identity uploaded a photo of himself wearing his ID badge from the hospital. The layout of this badge matched the style of those used at the hospital they suspected. The name on the ID read “Edvin Balyans”, which people also felt made sense.

Balyan is an Armenian name, and Glendale had a large Armenian community. Based on Dr. Gloves’ skin tone and extreme hairiness, they believed it was quite likely that he was in fact Armenian. As for the S at the end of Balyans, we can probably chalk that up to Ellis Island doing Ellis Island things.

It didn’t take long for internet investigators to find out that there was in fact an Edvin Balyans living in Glendale, and they posted his name, address, and phone number online. People began staking out the hospital and believed they had identified his car. While it seemed like everything was coming to a head, everyone recognized that they couldn’t just jump the gun.

What if the nametag appearing in this photo was deliberate? None of the pictures had shown Dr. Gloves’ face, so who was to say that was really him on the ID badge? There had already been some speculation that Dr. Gloves was in fact two people rather than one, and the idea was put out there that this photo was posted as a way for one of the people involved to turn on the other one. Alternatively, it could have been somebody at the hospital setting up a hated coworker in the most vile and despicable way possible.

Of course, it really could have been his actual nametag as well. Even the most cautious criminals have a tendency to get caught by making really stupid mistakes. Nobody could agree on whether or not that was really Dr. Gloves’ name, and there was no way to be sure. But at the same time all of the people that had been investigating this case knew that they couldn’t just sit back and do nothing.

This is Fine.

As much as everybody wanted to jump Edvin and beat the shit out of him or worse, cooler heads were able to prevail. That may have been the name on the hospital ID, but that didn’t mean it was actually their guy. Instead of taking the law into their own hands, it was decided to put the law into the law’s hands. That may have been a mistake.

Numerous people across 4chan and Death Addict claimed to have reported the incident along with all of the collected evidence to the FBI. Allegedly many of these people showed proof of their reports, but again that is all lost to time so I can’t be sure. Of course, I find it hard to believe that so many people would claim to report something like this to the authorities but that not a single one would have actually done anything.

Unfortunately, it seems that the FBI decided not to do anything. According to all of the accounts, the FBI’s response was that posting the photos was immoral, but nothing included was actually illegal; there was nothing they could do. Everyone was understandably outraged, as of course there were crimes being committed…right?

At the very least, people believed Dr. Gloves had to have been guilty of “abuse of a corpse” under California law. The law states that “No person… shall treat a human corpse in a way that would outrage reasonable community sensibilities.” That’s a state law so the FBI wouldn’t handle it anyway, but surely they would pass it onto the state police.

Or they would have, if it weren’t for the words that everyone seemed to have ignored and that I previously concealed with an ellipsis. The full text actually reads “No person, except as authorized by law”.

If Dr. Gloves was in fact a doctor who had every right to be in that morgue with the bodies, then sadly he had the right to treat a human corpse in a way that would outrage your sensibilities. And none of the images came close to the legal definition of desecration of a corpse.

I already touched upon some of the details with the pictures of the girl in the pink shirt and the possibility that they could have just been staged photos he had his daughter take with him. Still weird, still highly inappropriate, and still absolutely disgusting, but it also wouldn’t have been illegal.

That just leaves the other pictures of the disabled and comatose children, and I can’t see another side to these ones. Dr. Gloves appeared to very clearly be depriving those children of air. They may not have died, but there’s no way that wouldn’t be abuse. Either this man was the absolute god of forced perspective, or something in those pictures had to constitute a crime. But allegedly the FBI disagreed.

Wrap Up

So who is Dr. Gloves? Was it really Edvin Balyans? Sadly, the answer to both of those questions is that we have absolutely no idea. After people claimed that everything had been sent to the FBI and the answer came back that there was no crime being committed, all investigation seemed to dissipate. Even though it is believed that the hospital was identified, nothing has come from it. No arrest was ever made involving anything that took place in this story.

Of course there is one minor caveat. Allegedly the FBI said that there was nothing illegal in the images, but the FBI says a lot of things. If they really did tell the people who reported the details of this case that there was nothing they could do, they could very well have been lying; police are known to do that.

If the FBI felt that there could be a crime but they needed more evidence, they wouldn’t do anything to compromise their investigation. You know, like telling a bunch of loudmouths on the internet that they were investigating this person. The internet sleuths had already scared Dr. Gloves into hiding by vocally attempting to dox him, the last thing the FBI would need is for those people to reveal the existence of a criminal investigation into his activities.

Maybe that’s wishful thinking on my part, but it does sort of make sense. The original discussions on both 4chan and Death Addict are gone. There were new threads made on both sites, but in both cases it appears to have been at least a year later. The discord server to discuss this case is also gone.

Same thing with the Google doc containing all of the combined research and evidence. I could barely find links to any of these things in the first place, but everything they lead to has been deleted. And it’s not like Google docs expire or anything, someone actively took it down.

All that exists now is second hand accounts and screenshots of screenshots. Is it possible that the FBI instructed all of these sites to remove everything about Dr. Gloves so that they could investigate him without everyone else making so much noise? Technically yes, though I’m hesitant to say it’s very likely.

It’s been over five years since this all happened, and it’s not like they were trying to bring down a giant criminal conspiracy; this investigation realistically should not have taken that long. Unfortunately, we may never know the truth. We have no idea if Balyans is Dr. Gloves. If he is, we have no information as to what happened to him. Even if it wasn’t illegal, did he at least lose his job? It’s hard to imagine any hospital would continue to employ the person that uploaded those pictures.

And if the nametag was a red herring, we may never know the culprit’s real identity. As far as I can tell, nobody ever faced any repercussions over this and likely never will. The leads have all been taken as far as they can be, and if authorities are unwilling or unable to do anything about it then there’s not really anything the rest of us can do. At least not anything that wouldn’t land us in jail.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the origin of the nickname ‘Dr. Gloves’?

The man in the images was given the nickname ‘Dr. Gloves’ because he could be seen wearing a pair of surgical gloves that went up to his elbows in most of the pictures.

What was the initial reaction of 4chan users to the images posted by Dr. Gloves?

Initially, many 4chan users were fascinated and wanted more images, treating the pictures of dead bodies and organs like porn. However, when images of live children being abused were posted, the reaction turned to outrage.

What was the suspected location of the hospital where Dr. Gloves worked?

The search was narrowed down to Dignity Health hospitals in California and Arizona based on the pattern of linens used in the images. Further investigation pointed to Glendale Memorial Health Foundation in Glendale, California.

What was the FBI’s response to the reports about Dr. Gloves?

The FBI reportedly stated that posting the photos was immoral but nothing included was actually illegal, and there was nothing they could do. They claimed that if Dr. Gloves was authorized by law to be in the morgue, his actions were not criminal.

What was the suspected identity of Dr. Gloves?

The name ‘Edvin Balyans’ appeared on a hospital ID badge in one of the images. Internet investigators found an Edvin Balyans living in Glendale, but it is unclear if he was actually Dr. Gloves.

What was the significance of the electric outlets in the images?

The shape of the electric outlets in the images indicated that the building was likely in the US or Canada. This detail helped narrow down the possible locations of the hospital.

What was the significance of the girl in the pink shirt in the images?

The girl in the pink shirt was the only child whose face was never visible in the images. It is possible that she was Dr. Gloves’ daughter, and the images were staged. Alternatively, she could have been a victim of abuse.

What was the significance of the laptop in one of the images?

The laptop in the background of one image was an HP Stream Professional Laptop, released in 2014. This indicated that the photos were recent and not from an earlier time period.

What was the significance of the hospital linens in the images?

The linens used in the images had a unique pattern with little orange elephants. This pattern was used exclusively by Dignity Health hospitals in California and Arizona, narrowing down the possible locations of the hospital.

What was the significance of the gimp mask worn by Dr. Gloves?

The gimp mask was worn to conceal Dr. Gloves’ identity. It created a disturbing image and was a key element in the nickname ‘Dr. Gloves’.

Sources

• Original Decoding the Unknown video: Who is Dr Gloves?
• Hero image source by Jengod / openverse, by-sa.