Regards, Ivan
Posted on 10/19/2006 2:51:43 PM PDT by MadIvan
Case reveals workings of body-snatching ring that earned almost $5 million by plundering corpses
THE daughter of Alistair Cooke called for the world to focus on the sale of body parts yesterday after the undertaker who cremated the legendary Letter from America broadcaster pleaded guilty to a ghoulish scheme to harvest his corpse.
Susan Cooke Kittredge told The Times that the revelations about her father — whose arms and legs were stolen after his death for use in surgery — lifted the lid on an issue of global concern. “It’s a conversation we are going to have to have as human beings,” she said.
The undertaker, Timothy O’Brien, is one of seven funeral directors who have struck confidential plea deals with prosecutors pursuing the spreading body-snatching scandal, sources close to the case told The Times yesterday.
Mr O’Brien is the former owner of New York Mortuary Service, a cut-price funeral home in East Harlem that Cooke’s daughter picked from Yellow Pages to handle her father’s body when he died of lung cancer in 2004 at the age of 95.
“I did know that Mr O’Brien had pleaded guilty and was cooperating. I believe the truth will set you free. I have always believed the more we know about this, the better off we will be,” the Reverend Cooke Kittredge, a Vermont pastor, said.
Medical records reveal that Cooke’s body was plundered at the funeral home for bone that was sold for use as surgical implants without his family’s consent. The documents list Cooke’s age as 85, making his body appear ten years younger than it was, and his cause of death not as cancer but as “cardiopulmonary arrest”.
Although he died just after midnight on March 30, 2004, the time of death was given falsely as 6.45am — apparently to suggest that the body was fresher than it was.
The broadcaster’s name was mis-spelt as “Alister”; his social security number was wrong; so was his doctor’s name. The consent form purporting to authorise the donation of body parts lists his daughter as a Susan Quint of the Bronx, whereas his only daughter is Susan Cooke Kittredge of Vermont.
It was initially thought that only Cooke’s legs were removed, but the medical records show that he was butchered for his arms, pelvis and other tissue.
The arms and legs were sent to Regeneration Technologies of Alachua, Florida, which says Cooke’s bones were never transplanted to anyone.
In a letter to Cooke’s daughter, Brian K. Hutchison, the company’s chairman, said it performed many “quality control procedures, and in this case our procedures prevented distribution as they are designed to do”.
It is still not clear where Cooke’s pelvis and other body parts were sent, or whether they were ever used in surgery.
US authorities say that the body-snatching ring earned almost $5 million (£2.7 million) and stole skin, bones, heart valves and other tissue from 1,077 corpses for sale to hospitals for use in surgery.
An updated indictment was unveiled yesterday charging four men with “enterprise corruption” and “body stealing” relating specifically to 24 corpses.
They face up to 25 years in jail.
Prosecutors said that the body-snatching ring was run by Michael Mastromarino, the founder of a New Jersey-based company called Biomedical Tissue Services that supplied body parts for surgical use.
Mr Mastromarino, who has pleaded not guilty, is a former dentist who once had a practice off Fifth Avenue, New York, that specialised in dental implant surgery. He was forced to surrender his dental licence and go into drug rehabilitation after he was sued for malpractice by several patients.
One lawsuit accused him of deserting a patient under general anaesthetic and says he was found in his bathroom with a hypodermic needle in his arm.
The three other men due to go on trial are Joseph Nicelli, an embalmer and former owner of the funeral home where the scheme was discovered, and two alleged “cutters” — Chris Aldorasi and Lee Cruceta. Mr Aldorasi told the New York Daily News that the team did six or seven “extractions” a day.
“It would take 45 minutes to take out the bones, then another 15 minutes for the skin, the upper arm, lower arm, thigh, abdominal area and more,” he said. “The skin would be put in jars. A whole person’s skin would fit in two jars about this big, about 16 inches,” he said.
Spines and large veins were also removed. The bodies, particularly those to have funerals with open coffins, were filled with PVC plumbing pipe to replace the missing bones, and sewn up.
Funeral home directors in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania were paid $1,000 for each corpse, but the harvested body parts yielded as much as $20,000, according to Mr Cruceta.
“OK, the bones — tibia, fibia, femur, humerus, radia and ulna (leg and arm bones) — went for $5,000; pelvis, tendons, ligaments, another $5,000; skin, another $5,000, spines, veins, valves, and you’re up to $20,000,” he said. New York magazine reported that Mr Cruceta was with Mr Mastromarino at the 2004 meeting of the American Association of Tissue Banks in Florida when Mr Aldorasi called from East Harlem funeral home to say he had Alistair Cooke — well known in America as the host of Masterpiece Theatre — on the table.
Mr Mastromarino’s answer, the magazine said, was: “Proceed.”
The seven funeral directors who have struck plea bargains will relinquish their licences and face jail terms. Prosecutors say that one will receive four to 12 years if he co-operates, and 25 if he does not.
Robert Koppelman, who represents the alleged “cutter” Mr Aldorasi, said the plea deals could help his client’s case. “The testimony by the funeral directors will be very helpful to my client,” he said. “It will demonstrate a lack of any criminal intent. He had no reason to believe there was no consent.”
So far only four funeral homes have been named in the body-snatching scandal. The New Jersey-based company at its centre sold bones, ligaments and skin for operations ranging from dental implants to heart valve replacements around the world.
In Britain, the Medical and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency has alerted 25 hospitals to the risk of contamination because Biomedical Tissue Services exported 82 pieces of bone to Britain for hip or jaw operations.
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
That'll make for some odd archaeological findings later on...
Great movie, BTW. "BOYYYYYYYYYY!"
LOL! We'd better go make sure he's not been compressed into a dwarf, then.
Saw that one on opening night in the 70s. :-)
My mother stated before she died back in '97 that she wanted to donate her organs, but when the time came we were told that organ donation over age 70 is not done. She was 74 at the time of her death.
Beware the Ball.
My favorite of this genre was the one with Rowdy Roddy Piper --- "The Hidden" or somesuch --- freaky aliens you could only see with glasses.
Yup, it was "They Live". Didn't care for the cultural references but the fight between Piper and Keith David is one of the best I've ever seen in a movie.
I remember that, too.
Scariest guy I ever saw in a movie, in my opinion.
Alistair Cooke
Alistair Cookie
"We were told that organ donation over age 70 is not done."
Organs can be donated at any age. Generally at that age they are used for research purposes, but they don't go to waste.
I question the timing of this article which has been published just days before Halloween.
Obviously designed to discourage trick-or-treaters from accepting edibles at their friendly local funeral homes.
The Democrats will stop at nothing.
Leni
Ivan, in the seventies, Genevieve Bujold, Michael Douglas, and Richard Widmark, playing the Bad Guy made a movie called "Coma". It was about this certain hospital putting patients to death while they were in a comatose state then selling their body parts all around the world. Frightening that someone has actually done this!!!!:-(
the Ball... is BACK!!!
Tom Selleck was one of the victims in COMA before he became a star.
These people sound like savages, not researchers. I listened to Cooke's 'Letter from America' on the radio every Sunday up until his death. I can't imagine this happening to him. It's one thing to donate your body to science. It's another to have this happen w/o permission or your family's knowledge.
Was this article really written by James Bone?
Yes, I remember him (Selleck) in the movie. I guess the reason we remember "Coma" so well is because it was a First Rate Thriller.
It's Chilling that somebody really did that with Mr. Cooke's body parts. I wonder if that undertaker had some sort of perverse connection to the movie, "Coma"?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.