If you are eating while reading this, I would suggest setting it aside. I found this story in yesterdays paper about an embalmer who's character was straight out of a Edgar Allan Poe short story.
A former funeral parlour owner and embalmer accused in a plot to plunder corpses for profit admitted to investigators last year that he and his partner rarely got permission to take body parts for transplants, according to court documents.
The papers detail a long statement given by Joseph Nicelli before he was charged in a plot to secretly remove skin, bone and other parts from hundreds of bodies from funeral homes in New York City, Rochester, New York, Philadelphia and New Jersey.
Nicelli implicated Michael Mastromarino, a former oral surgeon, as the mastermind of a scheme that made millions of dollars by selling the stolen tissue to biomedical companies that supply material for procedures including dental implants and hip replacements.
It is believed the tissue was sold to legitimate suppliers who distributed it around the world, including to eight provinces in Canada. Health Canada has said no patients who received the tissue have tested positive for any disease as a result.
During a failed bid in 2005 to head off his arrest, Nicelli said that after collecting bodies for embalming or cremation, he would divert them to Mastromarino to carve up without families' permission, a police report said.
Nicelli, 50, "stated maybe he spoke with two families about a possible donation, but all other extractions were done without consent," the report said.
He further claimed he overheard Mastromarino describing how on paperwork he "would change a donor's criteria such as age," the report added. "He would make them younger, which would be more attractive to the companies accepting the tissue."
Mastromarino also changed times of death to make the parts appear fresher and extracted them from cancer victims without telling the tissue banks, some of which consider the disease a disqualifying condition, Nicelli told investigators, according to the report.
Nicelli said that when he questioned the doctored paperwork, Mastromarino told him, "Don't worry about it."
Among the looted bodies was that of Masterpiece Theatre host Alistair Cooke, who died in 2004. 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.
Part of Nicelli's job was to restore bodies so that grieving families wouldn't notice bones had been removed, he said. In one instance, a daughter complained that her father looked shorter in the coffin.
Mastromarino has denied any wrongdoing, saying it was the funeral directors' role, not his, to obtain consent and medical histories of the dead and he took their word that the bodies were suitable for harvesting.
Mastromarino, owner of Biomedical Tissue Services of Fort Lee, New Jersey; Nicelli; and two so-called "cutters" were charged in February with body stealing, unlawful dissection and forgery. All pleaded not guilty before being released on bail.
Later,
Kenaz
