Oct 18, 2006 6:32 pm US/Eastern
New Indictment Issued In Stolen Body Parts Case
Unbelievable Story Gets Bigger, Spreads Across N.Y.
BROOKLYN (AP) ―
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Gruesome X-rays show the extent of the crime, with human bones replaced with plastic pipes and metal screws.
CBS
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Michael Mastromarino is accused of forging consent forms to steal body parts from funeral homes in order to sell them.
CBS
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Prosecutors offered grisly x-rays as proof of wrongdoing.
CBS
A grand jury has voted to bring additional charges in an alleged scheme to plunder corpses for profit, officials said Wednesday.
A new indictment adds allegations involving funeral homes in Manhattan, the Bronx and Rochester, N.Y., the officials said. Prosecutors in Brooklyn planned to announce the new charges in the body parts scandal at a news conference.
Prosecutors allege Michael Mastromarino, a former oral surgeon, and three other men secretly removed skin, bone and other parts from hundreds of bodies from funeral homes, without the permission of families. He allegedly made millions of dollars by selling the stolen tissue to biomedical companies that supply material for procedures including dental implants and hip replacements.
Among the looted bodies was that of "Masterpiece Theatre" host Alistair Cooke, who died in 2004.
Mastromarino, owner of Biomedical Tissue Services of Fort Lee, N.J., and the other defendants were charged in February with body stealing, unlawful dissection and forgery in a case a district attorney called "something out of a cheap horror movie." All the defendants pleaded not guilty before being released on bail.
At the time, prosecutors said they had unearthed evidence that death certificates and other paperwork were falsified. In Cooke's case, his age was recorded as 85 rather than 95 and the cause of death was listed as heart attack instead of lung cancer that had spread to his bones.
(© 2006 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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