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Guilty Plea Likely In Looted Bodies

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By ADAM GOLDMAN, The Associated Press

Published: January 20, 2008

NEW YORK - The man accused of scheming to plunder bodies for parts used in thousands of tissue transplants is poised to plead guilty, and authorities and victims' relatives say his testimony could roil the billion-dollar industry.

In an effort to escape a lengthy jail sentence in cases in Philadelphia and New York, Michael Mastromarino has agreed to talk to investigators about the companies that bought the stolen tissue, said his attorney, Mario Gallucci.

"Let's just say that he is going to assist them and give any information he has about the processors and their role," Gallucci said.

The companies that processed the tissue face hundreds of civil lawsuits. They claim, however, that they never knew the body parts weren't legitimately obtained and insist the former oral surgeon's plea deal, expected to be announced Tuesday, doesn't change anything.

The scandal broke two years ago when Mastromarino, 44, then owner of Biomedical Tissue Services, was accused of hacking up corpses from funeral homes in the Northeast. The body parts were sent to the processors, fetching as much as $7,000 apiece.

Mastromarino started BTS in 2001. The bodies came from funeral homes in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. BTS shipped the bone, skin and tendons to Regeneration Technologies, LifeCell Corp. and Tutogen Medical, all publicly traded companies, along with two nonprofits, Lost Mountain Tissue Bank and the Blood and Tissue Center of Central Texas.

Court documents show Regeneration, which recently agreed to merge with Tutogen in an all-stock deal, shipped a total of 19,446 pieces of tissue that BTS provided.

Minneapolis-based health giant Medtronic, which distributed some of the tissue it received from Regeneration, also has been sued but says the case is without merit.

The parts were used in disk replacements, knee operations, dental implants and a variety of other surgical procedures performed by unsuspecting doctors across the United States and in Canada. About 10,000 people received tissue supplied by BTS.

Among the bodies BTS looted was that of "Masterpiece Theatre" host Alistair Cooke, who died in 2004.

Medical records for Cooke show Regeneration received the arms and legs.

His daughter, Susan Cooke Kittredge, said Regeneration never bothered to verify her father's medical records or whether he had agreed to donate his arms and legs. Kittredge insists the companies had to know what Mastromarino was doing.

"If you look at it through an ethical lens, they committed the same crimes as Mastromarino," Kittredge said. "Clearly they did not check to see if the wishes of the family or of the deceased had been honored."

A Regeneration spokeswoman declined to comment, and a message left with a Tutogen executive was not returned. The processors, along with Medtronic, have said they had no idea that the body parts were illegally obtained.

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