Mastromarino, at center of ghoulish `body parts’ scandal, dies
His ring illegally `harvested' bones; he died of bone cancer
When Dr. Michael Mastromarino, the lead defendant in the infamous Brooklyn “body parts” trial, died on Sunday of bone cancer, some saw poetic justice.
From 2000 to 2005, Mastromarino, a former dentist, headed the New Jersey-based company Biomedical Tissue Services, which cut up corpses provided by funeral homes to “harvest” bones, organs and tissues for transplant.
While such an operation isn’t technically illegal, it was alleged and eventually proven in Kings County Supreme Court that Mastromarino and his cohorts forged family-consent forms, the ages of the deceased and their medical conditions. In civil suits, many plaintiffs later alleged that they or their relatives had gotten sick after receiving disease-tainted human tissues in transplants.