Posted on 12/03/2007 12:24:32 PM PST by Calpernia
A former funeral parlor owner and embalmer accused in a plot to plunder corpses and sell the body parts for transplants has been granted a separate trial because he needs more time to recover from a serious head injury, prosecutors said Monday.
Joseph Nicelli has been rehabilitating since suffering the injury in January by falling off a roof, but has not made enough progress to appear at an upcoming trial with three co-defendants. The trial is expected to begin sometime early next year in Brooklyn.
The four men were charged last year with removing skin, bone and other parts from hundreds of bodies at funeral homes in New York without family permission. A related case involving nearly 250 bodies has been brought in Philadelphia as well.
Seven funeral directors have since pleaded guilty to undisclosed charges and agreed to cooperate. Lawyers have said one was the director of a funeral home that took parts from the body of the late "Masterpiece Theatre'' host Alistair Cooke.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1583825/posts
Official: 4 Face Charges in Stolen Body Parts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1546273/posts
Details Emerge From Body Part Theft Case
Related:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1571528/posts
N.J. Firm Closed Amid Body Parts Probe
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1566574/posts
Bolster trust, chase greed away from death's door (NY-bones stolen from crematorium ..unreal)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1553644/posts
Stolen Human Tissue
Topics related by FR keyword:
ping
Excerpt from 2006:
Nicelli who was facing trial for the most ghoulish of charges. Prosecutors accuse 49-year-old Nicelli and partner Michael Mastromarino of chopping up more than a thousand bodies for parts. In a previous case, he allegedly replaced bones with plastic pipes
Do you call it a “chop shop” or a “body shop”?
Now there is a philosophical ponder!
I’ve often wondered how NYC cleaned up their streets with all the homeless people. There hasn’t been any explanation as to what NYC did with them.
I guess this would be a way....just thinking out loud.
Course, I may be biased in your favor——but that is a great question for a “Body Parts” thread. LOL.
True-—so very true.
“Parts is parts!”
But do they have a core you have to return to avoid the charge ?
http://www.louschuler.com/archives/health/index.html#a001064
The Sum of Your Parts
I meant to write about the trade in stolen body parts from cadavers when I first read about it months ago. The topic has particular resonance for me because one of my unpublished novels revolved around the subject. The bad guys were killing people off, and pursuing the hero, because they needed certain materials for medical experiments, and these materials weren’t parts of a human body that a living person was likely to give up for any amount of money.
(To give you a hint which body parts were involved, the title was Modern Biceps.)
Now the issue is back in the news:
Last week prosecutors charged four men, including Nicelli and the ring’s supposed leader, a former Manhattan dentist named Michael Mastromarino, with running a multimillion-dollar body-snatching business that looted bones and tissue from more than a thousand corpses. The men, they say, then sold the body parts to legitimate companies that supplied hospitals around the United States. Hundreds of unsuspecting people have received the tissue, which is used in such procedures as joint and heart-valve replacements, back surgery, dental implants and skin grafts. Many are now rushing to doctors to be tested for tainted tissue. Some have already filed civil lawsuits. (One New Jersey lawyer alone has signed up some 200 clients.)
Kings County District Attorney Charles Hynes didn’t try to hide his disgust in announcing the 122-count indictment, which included charges of opening graves, body stealing, forgery, grand larceny and racketeering. “What happened here ... is like something out of a cheap horror movie.” [Or, in my case, an unpublished mystery novel.] ...
Mastromarino, who once had a lucrative dental practice, surrendered his license in 2000 because he was addicted to the painkiller Demerol. He started a new career as a body harvester in nearby New Jersey, opening Biomedical Tissue Services, an FDA-registered company that appeared completely legit. Nicelli allegedly got many of the corpses from funeral directors in New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia who had hired him to embalm them in his Brooklyn facility. A single harvested body could yield $7,000. Even after Nicelli sold the funeral home, he allegedly continued to help Mastromarino sneak into the secret operating room at night to dissect corpses. To hide their crimes, prosecutors say, Mastromarino and his cohorts replaced looted bones with plumbing pipes, and stuffed their surgical gloves and gowns into the bodies before stitching them back together. After robbing the bodies, the men allegedly forged death certificates to hide that the tissue had often been stolen from bodies that would have been rejected as donors being too old or sick.
We learned late last year that the bones of Alistair Cooke, who died two years ago at 95, were among those stolen:
According to the New York Daily News his bones were stolen by a criminal ring trading body parts.
They were later sold by a biomedical tissue company now under investigation, the paper claims.
When Cooke died of lung cancer that spread to his bones in March 2004, his body was taken to a funeral home in Manhattan.
Two days later, relatives of the iconic broadcaster received his ashes, which were then scattered in New York’s Central Park.
Now they have been told that body snatchers allegedly surgically removed his bones and sold them for more than $7,000 (£4,000) to a company supplying parts for use in dental implants and various orthopaedic procedures.
Still, I’m intrigued by the idea that my bones and ligaments are worth just $7,000.
According to this article, an entire human body would be worth about $80,000, although the columnist doesn’t offer any sources for that estimate.
Here’s a report from Mozambique (!) that discusses the involvement of criminal gangs in the international black market for human body parts:
These groups usually kill specifically for the purpose of extracting organs. They rely on two methods: one is to contract with other criminals to murder the victims and then to extract the required organs; the second is to kill the victims themselves. The latter approach is often preferred because there is less risk that information relating to the murder will spread. According to police sources, one of the groups was arrested recently in Nampula Province. Corruption of customs officers is often relied upon when borders have to be crossed to supply organs in neighbouring countries. Police officers who obtain information about the activities of these groups are also bribed. Police statistics do not cover the activities of these groups and it is not known whether their activities are on the increase.
According to this, human-organ trafficking is part of the underbelly of globalization:
“The circulation of organs follows the modern routes of capital: from south to north; from third world to first world; from poor to rich; from black and brown to white. ... [Moreover] women are rarely the recipients of purchased organs.” Prices of organs also follow world markets. For instance, a kidney in Iraq can be purchased for $500 to $1,000; in Manila, $1,000; in Lima, Peru, aroundr $10,000; and in the United States, $30,000.
Who are the buyers? They are the rich and medically insured, those who reject dialysis, and those who refuse organs from cadavers as “unhealthy, unnatural.” Who are the sellers? Essentially, the young and poor, especially in places like Russia and Moldova: those who are in debt, those who are seeking ways to feed their family, and so on. Who are the brokers? Scheper-Hughes identified those who facilitate the buying and selling of organs as “international transplant coordinators,” business corporations, doctors, religious and patient rights organizations, and local criminals.
If you’re curious about the organ trade in your part of the world, you can use this interactive map.
Finally, there’s the urban legend of the tourist who gets drugged and wakes up the next morning with a nasty scar, soon learning that she’s been the unwilling victim of kidney theft.
According to Snopes.com, there’s no known case of an organ being taken from an unwilling donor (at least not one who lived to tell about it), but there is at least one case of a willing donor later claiming he was robbed:
These horrific claims made by a Turkish man who’d been brought to Britain to sell a kidney are excerpted from a 8 December 1989 Reuters wire report:
Kurdish Moslem Ahmet Koc, 34, said through an interpreter he had been lured to Britain last year with the promise of a job by Turkish businessmen who told him he would need a medical check.He went to a hospital which he thought was a hotel and allowed himself to be given an injection which he believed was a blood test. When he came round he was told his appendix had been taken out. It was only three days later that he was told his kidney had been removed and transplanted into another patient in the hospital but that he would be paid a lot of money for it.
Well, there’s news and there’s news.
Far from being a victim, Koc was one of a consignment of four Turks who sold a kidney that day. The removals/transplants took place in Britain in 1988, and in January 1989 Koc went on record in Turkey with his tale of organ abduction, likely in an effort to get the organ brokers who’d handled his case into trouble with Turkish authorities. (Which he succeeded in doing — one of the two brothers who’d arranged the sale was charged in January 1989 and sentenced to two years in jail in May of that year as a result of Koc’s testimony. Koc received a two-year suspended sentence for his part in the illegal sale.)
But those were the innocent days of the illicit organ trade, when the victims were not just willing participants, they were compensated and received medical treatment.
“Body by Phisher”?
http://sunsite3.berkeley.edu/biotech/organswatch/pages/hot_spots.html
Interactive Map Activity related to the organ trade around the world
bump
>>>Mastromarino, who once had a lucrative dental practice, surrendered his license in 2000 because he was addicted to the painkiller Demerol. He started a new career as a body harvester in nearby New Jersey, opening Biomedical Tissue Services, an FDA-registered company that appeared completely legit.<<<
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |
Media Inquiries: |
Under its comprehensive framework for ensuring the safety of human tissue products, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today ordered Biomedical Tissue Services, Ltd. (BTS), of Fort Lee, NJ, a human tissue-recovery firm, and its CEO and Executive Director of Operations, Michael Mastromarino, D.D.S., to immediately cease all manufacturing operations. All tissue products initially recovered from human donors by BTS were recalled. FDA is carefully monitoring these recalls to account for all of the tissue distributed.
"FDA's investigation of BTS revealed serious and widespread deficiencies in their manufacturing practices that provide the agency reason to believe that allowing the firm to manufacture would present a danger to public health by increasing the risk of communicable disease transmission," said Margaret O'K. Glavin, FDA's Associate Commissioner for Regulatory Affairs.
"FDA's current regulatory framework for Human Tissue and Cellular and Tissue Based Products (HCT/Ps) provides strong measures that the agency can utilize to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases by HCT/Ps, and require firms to screen and test donors for relevant communicable disease agents and diseases and to ensure that HCT/Ps are processed in a way that prevents communicable disease contamination and cross-contamination," added Jesse L. Goodman, MD, MPH, director of FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.
The FDA order to cease manufacturing and to retain HCT/Ps requires BTS to suspend any and all manufacturing steps, including but not limited to the recovery and shipment of HCT/Ps. FDA's inspection of BTS uncovered serious violations of the regulations governing donor screening and record keeping practices, as well as failures to follow their own standard operating procedures (SOPs), failure to recover HCT/Ps in a manner that does not cause contamination or cross-contamination during recovery, and failure to adequately control environmental conditions. Despite records maintaining otherwise, the firm had inadequately screened donors for risk factors for, or clinical evidence of, relevant communicable disease agents and diseases. In addition, FDA found numerous instances where death certificates maintained in BTS' files were at variance with the death certificates FDA obtained from the state where the death occurred, on important information such as cause, place, and time of death, and the identity of the next of kin. After initially focusing efforts on assessing the safety of distributed tissues and facilitating the appropriate recalls, the Agency has determined that these violations, because of their serious nature, constitute a danger to health and is taking this unprecedented action.
FDA continues to investigate BTS' activities and to work cooperatively with tissue processors and appropriate federal, state and local authorities, and will take further actions as needed.
You can view a copy of the BTS Order of Cessation at: www.fda.gov/cber/compl/bts013106.htm.
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Humor of the day. He is a Ted Kennedy fan.
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MASTROMARINO, MICHAEL |
PHYSICIAN |
1/23/1995 |
$250 |
Kennedy, Edward M |
More than 450 people nationwide now claim they received illegally obtained and possibly diseased body parts from a New Jersey-based scheme, according to court documents.
The Food and Drug Administration has said it's concerned that the bone and tissue could be infected with the AIDS virus, syphilis and hepatitis, but the risk of infection is small.
The FDA, which did not return requests for comment, has not said whether any patients have ailments linked to the tissue, nor has it revealed how many people received it.
However, a document filed in a South Dakota lawsuit states that 13 plaintiffs nationwide claim they have contracted a disease.
The South Dakota case was brought by Charles Geigle of Oliver County, N.D., who claims he received transplanted bone tissue that might be infected.
He had back surgery April 30, 2004, at Sioux Valley Hospital in Sioux Falls, according to his complaint filed in U.S. District Court.
Defendants in the lawsuit, which seeks class-action status, have asked for a delay so they can argue that it should be transferred to the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, which coordinates identical federal civil lawsuits into one jurisdiction.
Of the 451 cases filed so far, 189 are in federal courts and 134 of them have been transferred to the panel, court documents state. Two other South Dakota cases are among those that have been transferred.
"The need for coordination of this national litigation is compelling. The multiple proposed classes, as well as the individual actions, are overlapping. The complaints contain virtually identical allegations in many cases," according to one document in Geigle's case.
He received a letter in December 2005 from a doctor telling him the bone tissue he received might have been illegally acquired and that he could be at risk of getting a disease.
The supplier was Biomedical Tissue Services, a now-defunct Fort Lee, N.J., company owned by former dentist Michael Mastromarino, who made millions of dollars from the scheme, prosecutors have said.
He and three other men are accused of secretly removing skin, bone and other parts from up to 1,000 bodies from funeral homes without the families' permission.
"When a funeral was scheduled to be 'open casket,' harvested bone taken from the deceased was replaced with PVC pipe and other objects so the bodies would still appear normal during the funeral proceedings," court documents state.
The men also changed the names of the donors, medical records, death certificates and other information "in order to conceal the lifestyle and medical history of the donors," the documents said.
(snip)
The medical records that accompanied the body of “Masterpiece Theatre” host Alistair Cooke were wrong in just about every possible way.
His name was misspelled. His birthdate was off by 10 years. His Social Security number wasn’t even close. Also wrong were the name of his doctor and the time and cause of his death.
There was even a bogus name and phone number for a family member who supposedly agreed to donate the 95-year-old celebrity’s body parts for tissue transplants.
The records, obtained by The Associated Press, provide the most in-depth look so far into the case of the famed TV personality, and raise more questions about the safety of the cadaver tissue industry: Why didn’t the tissue processor that acquired Cooke’s body parts catch any of the bogus entries?
“It’s deeply disturbing,” said Susan Cooke Kittredge, Cooke’s daughter. “It throws out any kind of faith I had in the system. It’s so broken. It’s horrible to me that this wasn’t caught.”
(snip)
In this case, Regeneration and four other processors put their faith in Biomedical Tissue Services of Fort Lee, N.J., which was shut down earlier this year and is at the center of a national scandal involving the theft of cadaver tissue. Michael Mastromarino, former chief executive of Biomedical Tissue Services, helped prepare the records for Cooke and others whose bodies were sent to be processed.
(snip)
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