Dentist Pleads Guilty to Stealing and Selling Body Parts

Dentist Pleads Guilty to Stealing and Selling Body Parts

By ALAN FEUER
Published: March 19, 2008

A dentist from New Jersey pleaded guilty on Tuesday to running a corrupt $4.6 million enterprise through which body parts were plundered from funeral homes and sold for use in transplants and medical research.

The dentist, Michael Mastromarino, 44, appeared in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, pleading guilty to numerous charges of enterprise corruption, reckless endangerment and body stealing. In exchange for admitting that he was the ringleader of the harvesting operation — which sold hundreds, perhaps thousands, of bone fragments and bits of flesh to tissue processors around the country — Mr. Mastromarino will face 18 to 54 years in prison when he returns to court for sentencing on May 21. He would have faced additional time had he gone to trial and been convicted on all counts.

Mr. Mastromarino’s case broke more than two years ago with accusations that he and others were cutting up bodies at a funeral home in Brooklyn and selling the parts to medical science operations. Among the bodies plundered was that of Alistair Cooke, the British journalist and former host of “Masterpiece Theater.”

Seven funeral home directors have already pleaded guilty in the case, which led to worldwide notoriety and macabre headlines in the New York tabloids. Three men, Joseph Nicelli, Lee Cruceta and Christopher Aldorasi, who is currently on trial in the case, still face charges.

Tuesday’s plea — which lasted more than an hour — reprised the case’s ghastly theme with frequent references to “systematic tissue harvesting.” The names of 24 people whose bodies were carved up without the consent of their loved ones were read aloud in open court.

Mr. Mastromarino, appearing in bluejeans and a fresh-pressed khaki work shirt, answered yes perhaps 100 times as two assistant district attorneys led him through the details of his crimes. He admitted not only to stealing bone and tissue samples from numerous corpses, but also to forging consent forms and medical records so that processing companies would accept the samples.

In the past decade, the growth in the human tissue processing market has raised concerns about the transfer of disease during orthopedic and neurosurgical operations. Mr. Mastromarino contributed to those concerns by acknowledging that he sold several tissue samples that were cancerous or infected with H.I.V. and hepatitis, but disguised those facts through fake documentation.

Mr. Mastromarino, whose dentistry license is suspended, operated Biomedical Tissue Services until the Food and Drug Administration shut it down in 2006, describing its inaccurate record-keeping as a health threat. Prosecutors have said that possibly thousands of patients may have tainted blood, bone or tissue samples in their bodies.

After the plea, Mr. Mastromarino’s lawyer, Mario Gallucci, said Biomedical Tissue Services started as a legitimate company with all the proper certifications. “Unfortunately, he” — Mr. Mastromarino — “decided to cut corners in order to satisfy the increasing demand for business.”

Responding to that statement, Josh Hanshaft, the prosecutor who oversaw the case for the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, said that Mr. Mastromarino cut more than corners.

“He cut limbs, he cut legs, he cut arms,” Mr. Hanshaft said. “He mutilated bodies for profit and greed.”

As part of his guilty plea, Mr. Mastromarino, his company and his wife, Barbara Mastromarino, have agreed to pay $4.6 million to the district attorney’s office, which will then distribute it among the relatives of the victims in the case. Mr. Mastromarino has also been sued in civil court by as many as 900 victims from across the country and in England. Mr. Gallucci said Mr. Mastromarino had not responded to any of the suits and was representing himself in the civil cases.

After Mr. Mastromarino was returned to custody pending sentencing, some of the families affected in the case spoke before a bank of television cameras. A lawyer for some of the families, Sanford A. Rubenstein, thanked Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney, for prosecuting the case.

“I can’t believe that someone would be so sick as to do that,” said Cheryl Stewart, whose father, James Thornton Sr., had his body plundered by Mr. Mastromarino after his death from respiratory failure. “It’s just disgusting.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/nyregion/thecity/19bones.html