USA: Four men are charged in New York for illegally harvesting body parts of corpses brought to a funeral home and selling them to be translanted.

Record ID: 583616

  • Title: USA: Four men are charged in New York for illegally harvesting body parts of corpses brought to a funeral home and selling them to be translanted.
  • Date: 24th February 2006
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) RAYMOND W. KELLY, NEW YORK POLICE COMMISSIONER, SAYING: "The detective (Patricia O'Brien) learned that bodies from the embalming room on the floor below would be hoisted on a mechanical lift to the surgery, where they would be harvested for their spines, legs and arm bones, tendons and other body parts."
  • Embargoed: 11th March 2006 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Usa
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
  • Reuters ID: LVA2711FJ7LELKE2L7OIQ579FP3V
  • Story Text: New York authorities on Thursday (February 23) charged four men with
    illegally harvesting and selling tissue from 1,077 dead people in the past
    four years, including the remains of British broadcaster Alistair Cooke.
    "Frequently the defendants principally led by Mastromarino and
    Nicelli, would misstate the cause of death as well as the age of the deceased.
    For example, the well respected host of "Masterpiece Theatre"
    Alistair Cooke, had his tissue removed and Mastromarino and Nicelli listed his
    age at eighty-five and the cause of death as heart attack. In fact Mr. Cooke
    was ninety-five years of age and the cause of death was lung cancer,"
    said Kings County (in Brooklyn) District Attorney, CHarles J. Hynes.
    The accused, Dr. Michael Mastromarino, chief executive of a company
    that sold human tissue for medical implants, Biomedical Tissue Services,
    Daniel George and Sons funeral home owner Joseph Nicelli and Lee Crucetta and
    Christopher Aldorasi, were indicted on charges including conspiracy, unlawful
    dissection and forgery.
    Prosecutors said the men, working with the Brooklyn funeral home, got
    bones and organs from the bodies of people who were not organ donors. The
    tissue was then sold via legitimate medical channels for use in procedures
    like hip replacements.
    Many of the deceased would have been ineligible as donors due to
    illness or age, including Cooke, a longtime host of the U.S. TV program
    "Masterpiece Theater" and known for his Letter from America BBC
    broadcasts, who died in 2004.
    After recently losing his father, Thomas Dumaine, to bladder cancer,
    Brooklyn resident Anthony Dumaine discovered to his horror that his father's
    body had been violated and bones removed, allegedly by the accused.
    He explained, "I went to go see, to a funeral home at Daniel
    George to have him laid out and basically what I thought was going to be
    saying goodbye to my father didn't turn out that way. They had to exhume him
    again."
    During a 15-month investigation which included the exhumation of six
    bodies, authorities discovered that after removing bones, the men had replaced
    them with plastic pipes to maintain an intact appearance. In some cases, they
    also left gloves, aprons and other things in the bodies.
    The police officer who first broke the case, detective Patricia
    O'Brien, began her investigation after a complaint from the new funeral home
    owner that the previous owner of Daniel George & Sons funeral home had
    absconded with funds.
    "The detective (Patricia O'Brien) learned that bodies from the
    embalming room on the floor below would be hoisted on a mechanical lift to the
    surgery, where they would be harvested for their spines, legs and arm bones,
    tendons and other body parts," New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly
    told a news conference.
    Between thirty and forty funeral homes are believed to have been
    involved in the racket and the removed parts were sold throughout the country
    for use in medical procedures. The most serious charge on the 122-count
    indictment, of enterprise corruption, carried a possible 25-year sentence.
    Said Chad Siegel, Lee Crucetta's attorney, "The district
    attorney's office knows we're ready to go forward completely and bring this to
    a trial and to a jury, who can look at this impartially. And I'm confident
    that after they hear all the evidence in this case they will agree with us
    that Mr. Crucetta did absolutely nothing wrong and acquit him."
    The harvested tissues were sold by Mastromarino's Fort Lee, New
    Jersey-based company, Biomedical Tissue Services Ltd., which was ordered to
    cease operations last month by the Food and Drug Administration. At least
    three companies that bought materials from Biomedical Tissue Services have
    issued recall notices of some of their products in recent months.
    Hynes said the four men made at least 2 million U.S. dollars (USD)
    through the scheme.
    Transplanting of tissues such as muscle, skin and bone is common in the
    United States and the trade in implantable body parts is legal, providing that
    certain conditions are met.
    NYK/JRC
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