Return of the bodysnatchers

From The Times:

 

Funeral directors 'sold corpses for cash'

 

America’s bodysnatching trade was exposed in gruesome detail yesterday when three funeral directors were charged with selling corpses for $1,000 (£500) apiece so that their bones, tissue and skin could be transplanted into unsuspecting hospital patients around the world. The funeral directors are accused of forging death certificates to say that the cause of death was either a heart attack or blunt-force trauma, so that the body parts could be sold on.

At least one of the “donors” was HIV-positive and suffered from hepatitis C and cancer.

After a 16-month investigation, a grand jury in Philadelphia said that 244 bodies were sold to a former oral surgeon in Brooklyn, who allegedly ran a team of “cutters” to remove the most lucrative parts. The surgeon, Michael Mastromarino - whose former company was called Biomedical Tissue Services - is already facing charges in New York for plundering 1,077 bodies, including the 244 from Philadelphia.

Other funeral directors in New York have already pleaded guilty as part of the same investigation - including one man whose funeral home allegedly removed parts from the body of the late broadcaster Alistair Cooke and replaced them with plastic plumbing materials...

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