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| America's Body Snatchers |
| Corpses stripped of bones and tissue for financial gain |
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Robert Neff (neff)  |
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Published 2006-10-31 15:14 (KST) |
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It has been described like a plot in a "cheap horror movie," and "a scandal so grotesque that it reads like a real-life sequel to Frankenstein:"(1) the alleged "plunder[ing of] cadavers for body parts"(2) by Biomedical Tissue Service (B.T.S.), a company founded by Michael Mastromarino after losing his dental license.
The Brooklyn District Attorney, Charles Hynes, described Mastromarino and three of his employees as "ghoulish thieves [who] thought they could pull off the crime of the century, stealing bones from the dead, without any thoughts of their victims' families or the transplant recipients who would receive possibly tainted bone and tissue grafts."
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FROM THE SECTION |
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| According to the charges filed against B.T.S. and its employees, more than "1,000 corpses were harvested from area funeral homes." Forging consent documents, death certificates and concealing disease and substance abuse were among the allegations, including the almost archaic charges of body stealing and opening graves.(3) It was, Hynes deemed, "right at the top of the line for the debasement of humanity."(4)
While the sale of body organs is illegal in the United States, a reasonable process fee can be obtained for the harvesting of tissue and bones. It is a one billion dollar industry that thrives on the desperation of those in need of body parts -- a demand that can not be met alone through donors.
Jim Knipfel in his article "Corpse Desecration: What's In It For Me?," points out that the demand for body parts has exceeded the supply and has contributed to a black market of body parts that is growing five to ten percent annually. He noted that "human life may be pretty cheap, but on the open market the average body could be worth about $150,000."(5) In fact, an alarming number of the articles dealing with this case have pointed out the costs of human body parts, and that all parts of the body can be sold.
Knipfel goes on to explain that "part of what's feeding the black market is the American attitude toward death. We want the bodies of our loved ones -- no matter how desiccated, gnawed up, or wasted away they might be -- preserved, protected, and treated with the same respect and dignity they would've received if they were still alive."(6)
While it is obvious that most of the victim's families wanted to have their loved ones treated with respect, many did not receive it, and instead were exploited for the financial gain of others who claimed they were helping humanity. Tissue and bones are not only used as transplants but also assist the cosmetic surgery industry -- smoothing out wrinkles, thickening lips, and so forth.
Vito Bruno's father, Michael, died of cancer and was cremated as he had requested, but prior to his cremation part of his body was illegally harvested and the signature on the donor form forged. The New York Daily article about his father's harvest was aptly entitled "They Carved Up My Father!"
Later, in an interview on the TV program Insight, he said: "It's just beyond anything anybody could ever comprehend. It's just the sickest, sickest story you could hear."(7)
Many of the dead victims came from what one of the defendants termed "the poor areas" of New York, Newark, and Philadelphia.(8) He claimed that he thought many of them had been promised compensation in the form of lower casket costs or other services. Other victims may have come from the local morgues, the John and Jane Does of society. However not all of the victims were poor and unknown.
Alistair Cooke, the noted celebrity of Masterpiece Theater and Letter From America on BBC Radio also fell victim to B.T.S. His daughter honored his request to have his body cremated and the ashes scattered about Central Park, but she later learned that his body was carved up and his bones sold for $7,000 to be used as transplants -- despite the fact he was 95 years old and died of cancer.(9)
When Cooke's daughter, Cooke Kettredge, was asked how her father would have felt about being harvested she replied: "He would be horrified. He would be completely -- his skin would crawl. He had a very weak stomach and it would make him sick,"(10) but noted in another interview that, "at the same time, he would have appreciated the Dickensian nature of it."(11) She then wondered how Mastromarino would feel if "someone chopped up his mother" or if his "health was severely compromised as a byproduct of someone else's greed."(12)
Not all the victims are the deceased or their families, some are the recipients themselves. The true number of people affected may never be known, but considering each body can supply tissue to 50 or more people, the number is staggering.(13) The possible victims are not only in the United States: B.T.S. also provided material for patients in Canada and Europe.
There are medical concerns about how safe the recipients of these transplants are. A 22-year-old healthy recipient two years ago suddenly died from a rare bacterium he acquired from his implant. Twenty-two people in Oregon contracted hepatitis C, and three people in New York and New Jersey acquired syphilis from illegally harvested tissue, were amongst the transplant victims.(14)
Some recipients worry not so much about health, but of other matters. Heather Augustin, a recipient of two disks in her neck was alarmed to discover that they were likely to have come from an elderly person, and possibly through illegal harvesting. She expressed trouble sleeping. "You think, 'I'm carrying a bone in my neck from someone who didn't want to get chopped up.' I'm, like, in total shock. What am I supposed to do with these thoughts?"(15)
Where were the bodies obtained? In 2002, Mastromarino traveled to Russia in an effort to buy bones and other body parts from dead Russian prisoners, but was forced to give up the idea when it was determined that it was too unsanitary, let alone difficult to import body parts into the United States.(16) There are also allegations that he may have worked in cohorts with city morgue workers and harvested from unclaimed bodies -- bodies that would not be missed.
Many of the harvests were done at funeral homes and mortuaries in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania -- completely unknown to the families. Many of these places did not have refrigeration -- nor were they sterile, but nonetheless harvesting was allegedly performed in them -- the parts taken away in coolers.
Which bodies were chosen for harvesting? The FDA has regulations forbidding the harvest of body parts from people who passed away due to cancer and infectious diseases, but Lee Cruceta, one of the more vocal defendants, described the rules that he and his fellow harvesters had: "We always went by the rule that if you come across a body and you say to yourself, 'I don't want any part of that person in my body,' you rule the case out."(17)
However, this wasn't always the case. Sometimes they found obvious signs of cancer, and, according to Cruceta, he called his employer Mastromarino and notified him that the body was unsatisfactory. This was very unpopular with the funeral home directors in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania who received up to $1,000 per body and were unwilling to let this easy money pass. They complained to Mastromarino that Cruceta just "[didn't] want to work," and that there was nothing wrong with the bodies. Cruceta ended up buying a cell-phone with a camera so that he could send pictures to Mastromarino verifying the condition of the bodies, and while "that kind of helped a little," the demand was too great and many bodies were harvested.(18)
One of the centers for the harvests was at Daniel George & Son Funeral Home, where the corpse was laid upon an examining table on the first floor. In a scene almost reminiscent of Shelley's horror novel, Frankenstein, the table, powered by hydraulics, later raised the corpse and a harvester into a secret chamber on the second floor that police later described as "a virtual operating room, complete with the large and very bright overhead lighting associated with hospital surgery."(19) It was here that the harvest took place.
The harvesting team generally consisted of three men, chief amongst them Cruceta. They wore surgical gowns and caps, and operated efficiently and quickly.
According to Cruceta, they were able to harvest the bones from a body within 45 minutes, and needed only another 15 to strip the skin from the arms, abdomen, and other areas. It was the reconstruction of the body that took time. It took nearly an hour to place PVC pipes where bones had once been, and to sew up and redress the bodies so that they looked as if they had not been tampered with. They could process up to six or seven bodies a day and some days they were so busy that they ate their lunches and dinners in the dissecting room.(20)
Cruceta claimed that what they did was not gruesome but purely clinical. "We never made fun of any of these donors. We always treated everyone with respect."(21) "We took our time to make sure that we didn't nick the skin...sewed up whatever we damaged...so the families could at least have a decent funeral."(22)
Yet despite these claims of respect for the dead and the assurances that they "did everything by the book," the police have found some bodies with surgical gloves and other items sewed up inside. Neighbors have alleged that body bags containing corpses were often left lying on the sidewalk. Perhaps even more ghoulish were the alleged plastic garbage bags filled with surgical gloves, aprons and bloody cotton swabs left on sidewalk and later scattered about by cats and other animals.(23)
It is hard not to picture Cruceta as Igor -- Dr. Frankenstein's nefarious assistant. Cruceta, whose wife was unemployed and had four children, worked as a nurse at Beth Israel, but was having financial troubles until he went to work for Mastromarino in 2003. Working for Mastromarino his salary went from $50,000 to $185,000 annually -- he made about $200 to $300 per harvest, and sometimes did seven harvest a day. Not only was the money good, but Cruceta enjoyed the work -- especially the opportunity to use power tools on bodies.
Cruceta describes the harvesting as "kind of odorous" but "great work." When interviewed by Randall Paterson he nearly gloated about the things that we "might think are kind of gruesome," but he considers are "just, uh, very interesting stuff to see." He even smiled when he told Paterson, "I know what you look like inside."(24)
Cruceta maintains his innocence and feels that if people were more aware of what he actually did they would realize that "it's just not right" to call him a ghoul.(25) Joe Tacopina, one of Cruceta's lawyers, describes Cruceta as "a genuinely really sweet individual" who "has been demonized because he's the guy who was cutting off the limbs."(26) George Vomvolakis, another lawyer for Cruceta, sums it up in another way: "My client is 100 percent innocent...In retrospect, was my client naive? Yes. Was he dumb? Probably."(27)
On Oct. 15, 2006, Cruceta and two of his fellow defenders were described as characters out of a Dickens book. They hung their heads low as they shuffled past the cameras in shackles -- perhaps reflecting upon their alleged crimes -- crimes that are too horrific for the common person to imagine. Each, like their employer, Michael Mastromarino, pleaded not guilty. Mastromarino was described at the hearing as "a tall, somber figure in a black overcoat," who unabashedly looked into the cameras and, in fact, is "hurt and depressed" because "he really believed he was helping mankind." His lawyer argued that Mastomarino's work has not hurt anyone, and in fact has benefited the public health -- and thus, he too is innocent. As for his demeanor: "He knows he is not Dr. Frankenstein," his lawyer explained.(28)
In the past couple of weeks several of the funeral homes have since pleaded guilty to lesser charges and have agreed to testify against Mastomarino and his associates. While Mastomarino claims he is no Dr. Frankenstein, public opinion seems to be hounding him much like the incensed villagers in Shelley's book. His fate will soon rest with his peers, and a conviction could cost him up to 25 years in prison.
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(1)Associated Press, June 12, 2006
(2)Philadelphia Inquirer, Oct. 19, 2006
(3)William Sherman, "Dismantling the Bodies," New York Daily News, Oct. 15, 2006; Mathew Verrinder, "N.Y. Funeral Homes Plead Guilty to Body Part Theft," Reuters Life, Oct. 19, 2006
(4)"Man Accused of Illegally Harvesting Bodies," ABC News: Prime Time, Mar. 9, 2006
(5)Jim Knipfel, "Corpse Desecration: What's In It For Me? Grave Robbing in Brooklyn and Beyond," New York Press, Vol. 18 No. 47 (2005)
(6)Jim Knipfel, "Corpse Desecration: What's In It For Me? Grave Robbing in Brooklyn and Beyond," New York Press, Vol. 18 No. 47 (2005)
(7)"Black Market Body Parts," Insight, Jan. 11, 2006
(8)Randall Paterson, "The Organ Grinder," New York Magazine, Oct. 16, 2006
(9)"Black Market Body Parts," Insight, Jan. 11, 2006
(10)"Black Market Body Parts," Insight, Jan. 11, 2006
(11) Randall Paterson, "The Organ Grinder," New York Magazine, Oct. 16, 2006
(12)"Black Market Body Parts," Insight, Jan. 11, 2006
(13)"Man Accused of Illegally Harvesting Bodies," ABC News: Prime Time, Mar. 9, 2006
(14)"Black Market Body Parts," Insight, Jan. 11, 2006; Michael Powell and David Segal, "In New York, a Grisly Traffic in Body Parts Illegal Sales Worry Dead's Kin, Tissue Recipients," Washington Post, Jan. 28, 2006
(15) Michael Powell and David Segal, "In New York, a Grisly Traffic in Body Parts Illegal Sales Worry Dead's Kin, Tissue Recipients," Washington Post, Jan. 28, 2006
(16) Nancie L. Katz and William Sherman, "Ghouls Stalked Russia: Sought Dead Cons' Bodies," New York Daily News, Oct. 19, 2006
(17) Associated Press, June 12, 2006
(18) Randall Paterson, "The Organ Grinder," New York Magazine, Oct. 16, 2006; William Sherman, "Dismantling the Bodies -- Body Parts Cutter Reveals the Dirty Details," New York Daily News, Oct. 15, 2006
(19)Randall Paterson, "The Organ Grinder," New York Magazine, Oct. 16, 2006; Amy Thomson, "More Funeral Homes Charged in New York Body-Parts Theft Probe," www.bloomsberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aw8.x.GA6h3s, Oct. 18, 2006
(20)William Sherman, "Dismantling the Bodies: Body Parts Cutter Reveals the Dirty Details," New York Daily News, Oct. 15, 2006
(21)Associated Press, June 12, 2006
(22)Randall Paterson, "The Organ Grinder," New York Magazine, Oct. 16, 2006
(23)Randall Paterson, "The Organ Grinder," New York Magazine, Oct. 16, 2006
(24)Randall Paterson, "The Organ Grinder," New York Magazine, Oct. 16, 2006
(25)Randall Paterson, "The Organ Grinder," New York Magazine, Oct. 16, 2006
(26)Randall Paterson, "The Organ Grinder," New York Magazine, Oct. 16, 2006
(27)William Sherman, "Dismantling the Bodies -- Body Parts Cutter Reveals the Dirty Details," New York Daily News, Oct. 15, 2006
(28)Randall Paterson, "The Organ Grinder," New York Magazine, Oct. 16, 2006; Associated Press, June 12, 2006 |
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