Completely Knocked Down Human Body Parts for Sale! It is not out of a Stephen King's novel or one of those horror movies out of the studios in Hollywood; no it is real life imitating art right in the city of brotherly love, Philadelphia! Two brothers Louis and Gerald G
arzone, along with James McCafferty, who ran Garzone Funeral Home and crematorium admitted that they sold corpses to a company that trafficked in stolen body parts. They pleaded guilty to charges including conspiracy, theft, abusing corpses and welfare fraud. 
The macabre scheme involves selling bodies deposited with them for cremation to a body parts harvesting company Fort Lee (a New Jersey based Biomedical Tissue Services "BTS"). This company in turn harvests necessary bone, skin, tendons, tissues and other body parts for re-sale to a tissue reprocessing company in Florida, sometimes for a whopping price tag of $11,000 per a body. The Florida company then put these processed human body parts in the stream of medical commerce - selling to hospitals and patients needing transplants and implants throughout the
country. In all, the Garzone brothers sold a total of 244 corpses to BTS in the scheme netting them over two hundred thousand dollars at $1000 dollars per corpse; all without the consent or approval of the deceased's family. Such a single body could in turn yield bone and tissues parts worth more than $4,000! It is also noteworthy that some of these bodies died of very contagious disease such as cancer, aids or hepatitis C but their causes of death were usually disguised; and also some of corpses were too old or too diseased to be harvested legally. 
The master-mind of the scheme and owner of the body parts harvesting part in New Jersey, Michael Mastromarino (pictured here left) pleaded guilty to the charges in Philadelphia, which could net him life behind bars. Michael Mastromarino, a former Fifth Avenue, Manhattan New York oral surgeon/dentist had earlier pleaded guilty to 14 counts in a similar New York case that included enterprise corruption, body stealing and reckless endangerment in which he faces between 18 years and 54 years in prison and will forfeit $4.68 million for running the operation. The investigation covered a period during which a total of 1,077 corpses were sold and bought and carved up by the New J
ersey based company; which netted body parts worth between $6 million and $12 million between 2001 and 2005. According to two convicted body parts cutters, Lee Cruceta, 35 of Monreo New York and Chris Aldorasi (right) their job involves removing bones from the legs and replacing them with plastic piping in case an open-casket funeral was held. In their own words, “we put poles in the body, sewed up the holes and wait
ed for Joe to prep the bodies". Bodies were sourced from several funeral homes in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania among which were that of "Masterpiece Theatre" host Alistair Cooke (left) who died of lung cancer on March 30, 2004 at the age of 95 ; Lois Elder, 58, of Philadelphia who died of complications from a stroke in April 2005; 74-year-old James Thornton and 81 years old husband Joseph Folger. See generally Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Albert Tomei for additional reading!
The master-mind of the scheme and owner of the body parts harvesting part in New Jersey, Michael Mastromarino (pictured here left) pleaded guilty to the charges in Philadelphia, which could net him life behind bars. Michael Mastromarino, a former Fifth Avenue, Manhattan New York oral surgeon/dentist had earlier pleaded guilty to 14 counts in a similar New York case that included enterprise corruption, body stealing and reckless endangerment in which he faces between 18 years and 54 years in prison and will forfeit $4.68 million for running the operation. The investigation covered a period during which a total of 1,077 corpses were sold and bought and carved up by the New J
ersey based company; which netted body parts worth between $6 million and $12 million between 2001 and 2005. According to two convicted body parts cutters, Lee Cruceta, 35 of Monreo New York and Chris Aldorasi (right) their job involves removing bones from the legs and replacing them with plastic piping in case an open-casket funeral was held. In their own words, “we put poles in the body, sewed up the holes and wait
ed for Joe to prep the bodies". Bodies were sourced from several funeral homes in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania among which were that of "Masterpiece Theatre" host Alistair Cooke (left) who died of lung cancer on March 30, 2004 at the age of 95 ; Lois Elder, 58, of Philadelphia who died of complications from a stroke in April 2005; 74-year-old James Thornton and 81 years old husband Joseph Folger. See generally Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Albert Tomei for additional reading!Capo Louis Garzone!
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