Top Stories

BROOKLYN (AP) ― Authorities investigating a grisly case of stolen body parts said the proof is in the X-rays and photos of recently exhumed cadavers.

The images show that where leg bones should have been, someone had inserted white plastic pipes -- the kind used for home plumbing projects, available at any hardware store. The pipes were crudely reconnected to hip and anklebones with screws before the legs were sewn back up.

Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes compared it to "something out of a cheap horror movie."

The work, prosecutors charged on Thursday, was that of Michael Mastromarino, a former oral surgeon who allegedly made millions of dollars by covertly carving up bodies at a Brooklyn funeral home and then selling stolen tissue for dental implants, hip replacements and other procedures nationwide.

The case against Mastromarino involves hundreds of bodies that were looted without permission or proper screening for diseases and an untold number of patients who were unknowingly exposed to infection. Among the bodies was that of "Masterpiece Theatre" host Alistair Cooke, who died in 2004.

Mastromarino, owner of Biomedical Tissue Services of Fort Lee, N.J., Joseph Nicelli, a Brooklyn mortician, and two other defendants, Lee Crucetta and Christopher Aldorasi, pleaded not guilty to charges including enterprise corruption, body stealing, opening graves, unlawful dissection and forgery. Each would face up to 25 years in prison if convicted, prosecutors said.

At a news conference Thursday, authorities announced a 122-count indictment and released copies of photos and X-rays of decomposed bodies -- evidence in a widening investigation expected to result in more arrests.

Mastromarino, 42, went into the tissue business in 2001 after losing his license as an oral surgeon. Body parts can be legally donated if the family consents and if the deceased did not die from cancer or an infectious disease or at an excessive age.

The defendant teamed with Nicelli, who had embalming and cremation contracts with funeral homes around New York City and in Rochester, N.Y., Philadelphia and New Jersey.

Nicelli was paid up to $1,000 per body to deliver corpses to a secret second-floor operating room at his funeral parlor, where Mastromarino would remove bones, skin, tendons and other non-organ body parts, authorities said. Crucetta, a nurse, and Aldorasi allegedly helped Mastromarino cut up the bodies without the knowledge of the families.

The indictment alleges the defendants forged death certificates and consent forms to make it look as though they had permission and that the body parts were safe. In the case of Cooke, who died of cancer at age 95, paperwork was doctored to show his cause of death as heart attack and his age as 85.

Mastromarino made up to $7,000 a body by selling the potentially tainted tissue to companies that turned it into products used for a variety of dental and orthopedic surgeries done by unsuspecting doctors across the United States, authorities said.

The looted bodies were returned to unsuspecting funeral directors for burial, authorities said.

The scheme began to unravel by chance in November 2004, when a New York Police Department detective, Patricia O'Brien, responded to a report by the new owner of Nicelli's funeral home, who claimed he had cheated customers out of deposits for funerals. She grew suspicious when she was shown the hidden operating room.

Late last year, the Food and Drug Administration ordered a recall of the potentially tainted products and warned that an untold number of patients could have been exposed to HIV and other diseases during the procedures. It also insisted the risk of infection was minimal.

On Feb. 3, the FDA shut Biomedical Tissue Services, saying it had uncovered evidence the firm failed to screen for contaminated tissue. The agency also said it found that death certificates in the company's files were at odds with those on file with the state over the age of the deceased and the causes and times of death.

A judge set Mastromarino's bail at $1.5 million, Micelli's at $250,000 and Crucetta's and Aldorasi's at $500,000 each. They were ordered to return to court on March 30.

(© 2006 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)