Stolen bones: Local lawyer takes case of woman suing over bad transplant

[ Originally published on: Saturday, February 23, 2008 ]

GREENFIELD -- A section of spinal bone that was stolen from a human corpse and transplanted into a woman from Athol is the point of contention in a civil suit filed this month by a lawyer from Greenfield.

John Stobierski says that Bonnie Morneault, who has since moved out of the area, is horrified and incensed by what was done to the dead and their families, but she is also frightened by the possibility of disease transmission from the unidentified transplant tissue that has been put in her body.

''She has developed some medical problems, which I cannot disclose, and she is very worried about what might happen in the future,'' Stobierski said.

Because the people who were harvesting the bone and other organs from corpses in funeral homes did not keep accurate records as to from whom they stole the tissue, there is no way of knowing what medical problems the dead person might have had.

''I think the way it was detected is that some people were getting sick and the doctors were trying to track down where the diseases came from.

''My understanding is that some people have developed AIDS from this,'' Stobierski said.

One of the bodies that was looted was that of Masterpiece Theater host Alistair Cooke, whose arms, legs and pelvis were stolen despite the fact that he had died of cancer, which had spread to his bones.

According to court papers, the body thieves would often forge death certificates and other paperwork for the corpses, for example saying that a man who had died of cancer, or AIDS, had died of a heart attack, in order to make the harvested tissue seem more desirable to biomedical companies.

In the case of Alistair Cooke, for example, the thieves produced paperwork which said that he was 10 years younger than he was and had died of other problems than what actually killed him.

Stobierski says that some of the thieves removed long bones, such as those in the arms and legs, from the bodies and then replaced them with PVC pipe so that the family of the deceased could view the body at the funeral without knowing that the bones had been stolen.

News reports of guilty pleas in the case say that some of the conspirators admitted to filling the bodies with bloodied rags and used clothing to plump them up and make them look more normal for the funeral after the organs were removed.

Stobierski said that Morneault has not developed any particular syndrome and is not HIV positive, but he says that she is worried about where her bone graft may have come from and what medical conditions the source body may have had.

''She is seeking compensatory damages, damages for emotional distress and for unknown medical costs for conditions that might confront her for the rest of her life,'' he said.

According to Stobierski and news reports, hundreds of people across the country have begun suits against the perpetrators of this crime and their cases have been bolstered by the guilty pleas earlier this year of some of the major conspirators in the scheme.

Several funeral directors in New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia have pleaded guilty to their parts in the ongoing criminal conspiracy and implicated the alleged ringleader Michael Mastromarino, who is scheduled to plead guilty to felony counts and accept a sentence of 18 years.

Mastromarino, 44, an oral surgeon from New Jersey, was supposed to plead guilty in January, but the case was delayed so that the attorneys could iron out some difficulties.

The alleged body part merchant, Mastromarino, once owned a company called Biomedical Tissue Services (BTS) where prosecutors say the stolen body parts were processed and sent out to other firms, who may also have had knowledge of the scheme.

According to court records, BTS shipped a total of 19,446 pieces of tissue, including bone, skin and tendons, from plundered corpses to publicly traded companies such as Regeneration Technologies Inc., LifeCell Corp., Tutogen Medical Inc., and to nonprofit agencies like Lost Mountain Tissue Bank and the Tissue Center of Central Texas.

All of the companies that distributed the stolen body parts say that they had no idea where the transplant tissue came from and deny taking part in the criminal scheme, but Mastromarino has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors and has apparently implicated the companies according to news reports.

In 2005, Mastromarino and his confederates were indicted on 122 felony counts including being part of a corrupt enterprise, forgery, grand larceny, unlawful dissection, opening graves and body stealing. Some of them have already pleaded guilty and have been sentenced in New York State.

All of the funeral directors, nurses and others who have been convicted in the body looting conspiracy are from the New York, New Jersey Pennsylvania area. No one in Massachusetts has been indicted in the scheme.

According to Stobierski, Morneault's back operation was performed in April 2005 at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester. There is no indication that the doctors at the medical center were involved in the scheme, or knew that the tissue being transplanted had been stolen from corpses.

Court records say that around 10,000 people in the United States and Canada have received tissue supplied by BTS since they began operations in 2001.

The stolen body parts were used in disk replacements, knee operations, dental implants and a wide variety of other medical procedures.

According to court records, some of the body parts would sell for $1,000 to $7,000 each.

''The human body is a very valuable commodity after death, particularly as it is difficult to obtain enough parts legitimately,'' Stobierski said.

Prosecutors have said that they estimate that Mastromarino had taken in $6 million to $12 million in profits since the beginning of the scheme.

According to Stobierski, all of the hundreds of civil cases in the body stealing case have been consolidated into one ''multi district litigation'' which will be held before a judge in the United States District Court in New Jersey.

You can reach George Claxton at: gclaxton@recorder.com or (413) 772-0261 Ext. 279

 

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