That fear is surely shared by thousands of tissue recipients across the country who may have received tainted parts as a result of a uniquely ghoulish racket. On Feb. 23 police charged Michael Mastromarino, head of the tissue-procurement company Biomedical Tissue Services in Fort Lee, N.J., and Joseph Nicelli, owner of a Brooklyn funeral home, along with two other men with running the operation and selling illicitly obtained body parts (among them bones, tendons and heart valves) to legitimate tissue-processing companies that used the parts in creating products for procedures such as spinal disc or knee replacement surgery. Investigators say the men stole parts from Nicelli's clientele as well as from bodies he received from other New York City funeral homes. The men dissected all the bodies from New York City in Nicelli's funeral home, but the operation, authorities say, spread to as many as 40 funeral homes in four states as well as Canada. Along the way, they plundered 1,076 cadavers, forging consent forms, changing ages and causes of death on death certificates and even replacing stolen bones with plastic pipes. The men were so callous, prosecutors charge, they buried their aprons and other equipment in the bodies they raided. "I don't know if I've ever seen anything like this," says Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes. "It is an incalculable intrusion on human decency."
Tissue recipients aren't the only ones feeling betrayed. Hundreds of families entrusted their loved ones to the funeral homes, only to learn the bodies had been torn up. (Investigators expect more charges to be filed.) Elizabeth Michelli, 58, of Brooklyn, remembers how friendly Joseph Nicelli was after her husband, Michael, died in 2003 from prostate cancer. Two years later police told her Michael's body was plundered. "They took the veins from his little tired legs and groin," she says through tears. One famous victim of the scheme: the late Alistair Cooke, former host of Masterpiece Theatre, whose leg bones were pilfered after his 2004 death (see box). Still, Susan Cooke Kittredge, Cooke's daughter and a minister in Middlesex, Vt., worries about the living: "It's much worse for people who are the recipients of potentially fatal tissue. My heart goes out to them."
Although there have been no confirmed cases to date of people being infected by the tainted parts, the anxiety is inescapable for some. Just ask Michael St. Denis. In June 2002 the Marion, N.C., resident injured his neck in a fall, requiring surgery to replace two vertebrae. On Nov. 15, 2005, St. Denis, 39, who works at a poultry-processing plant, received a letter from the hospital alerting him that the Food and Drug Administration had issued a body-parts recall as a result of the scheme. St. Denis isn't considering having the bone removed, and so far no disease has been found, but his mind is not at peace. "It's an everyday thing as long as that bone's still in my neck," St. Denis says. "I just don't like the odds."
So far an untold number of former patients are in the process of filing civil lawsuits against the defendants and tissue-processing companies. All the defendants have pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges. Joseph Nicelli's "reputation is beyond reproach. He is a decent, hard-working individual," says his lawyer. Olive—whose attorney Andrew D'Arcy is planning a class-action suit—isn't buying it. In the months since she got the shocking news, she quit her job in California as a legal secretary and moved cross-country into her sister's home for emotional support. And she is not considering having her rebuilt breasts replaced, because doctors say another reconstruction is impossible. "That's what's happening to my life, due to these people and their greed and not caring."
A COOKE FAMILY TRAGEDY
After Masterpiece Theatre host Alistair Cooke died at 95 from lung cancer that had spread to his bones, his daughter Susan Cooke Kittredge of Middlesex, Vt., picked up the phone book and called the New York Mortuary Service to arrange for her father's remains to be cremated. It turned out, investigators say, that New York Mortuary was one of the biggest suppliers to the body-parts ring busted last year. Investigators say Cooke's leg bones were removed and documents were forged changing his age to 85 and his cause of death to a heart attack. "I want to remember my father as he was," says Kittredge, 56, a minister. "I don't want to be thinking about his corpse."
Brain $500-$600
Cervical Spine $835-$1,825
Elbow $350-$850
Leg $700-$1,000
Foot $200-$400
Head $550-$900
Temporal Bone $370-$550
Whole Cadaver $4,000-$5,000
- Contributors:
- Diane Herbst/New York City,
- Jeff Truesdell/Orlando,
- Nicole Weisensee Egan/Philadelphia.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
