Philadelphia: City of Brotherly Love, the Eagles, Soft Pretzels and Body Parts Snatchers??

"No penalty is too harsh for these guys, for the just unbelievably craven nature of what they did", said Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham in a news conference on October 4, 2007 regarding a ring of area funeral directors charged with selling 224 bodies at a price of $1,000 each. The purchaser was former oral surgeon Michael Mastromarino and former nurse Lee Cruceta, both of Brooklyn, New York.

Mastromarino had lost his license to practice dental surgery earlier this year because of drug charges not related to this incident, and also faces charges in the State of New York for the plunder of over 1,000 bodies. His cover was the now-closed Biomedical Tissue Services of Fort Lee, New Jersey, where he, Cruceta and a band of 'body cutters' took bones, tissues and skin to be transplanted in a number of unsuspecting patients the world over.

Also arrested and charged by the grand jury were funeral directors Gerald Garzone, 47, of North Wales, Pennsylvania; his older brother Louis Garzone, 65, of the Philadelphia area, and James McCafferty, 37, whose funeral establishment was also in Philadelphia.

Their indictment consists of literally thousands of counts of criminal conduct, including running an illegal business, theft of body parts and forgery. According to Mastromarino's attorney, Mario Gallucci, his client intends to fight the charges filed against him because he feels that he was "victimized by the funeral directors.

The funeral directors wre in charge of getting consent. All he (Mastromarino) was supposed to do was come in and harvest the tissue, and to send the samples down to the processors." The investigation of Biomedical Tissue and the three funeral directors was a year and a half in the making before charges could be filed. Cruceta, the former nurse, was in charge of running the 'cutting crew', who separated the body parts and skin tissues at the Fort Lee facility.