The Body Snatcher: Michael Mastromarino—Revisit

We are revisiting the wild and unforgettable story of Michael Mastromarino, a former dentist and oral surgeon turned "body snatcher". This unusual true crime story, which made national headlines in 2005, exposes a horrific black market trade and has victims whose final wishes were utterly betrayed.

This is a re-release of our original 2020 episode, brought back because the details of this shocking case connect directly to our current bonus series on the Netflix documentary, The Kings of Tupelo.

• From Dr. Mike to Ghoul: Michael Mastromarino, a New York University-trained dentist, lost his license due to struggles with substance abuse and malpractice. Forced to find a new career, he established Biomedical Tissue Services (BTS) in 2001.

• The Illegal Racket: Mastromarino began operating an illegal tissue recovery racket out of Brooklyn funeral homes. Instead of obtaining cadavers through safe and legal means, he was taking tissue and bone from people whose families did not give consent.

• A Horrific Deception: Mastromarino would pay for access to a deceased body. He and his employees would then surgically remove arms, legs, bones, ligaments, tendons, and skin to sell for transplantation, making between $10,000 and $15,000 per body.

• The PVC Pipes: For bodies slated for burial, Mastromarino’s team would carefully remove the bones and replace them with PVC pipes to maintain the body's structure for an open-casket viewing. They also forged ages and causes of death on official certificates.

Join us as we detail how a tip from a suspicious new funeral home owner in Brooklyn unraveled one of the most disrespectful and shocking crimes in modern history—a case that revealed the grim consequences when profit dictates the post-mortem process.

Don't miss the full connection: Our bonus episodes this month cover The Kings of Tupelo and reveal how that story links back to the "Body Snatcher." You can listen to the bonus content now by subscribing on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or through our patreon.

Check-out bonus episodes up on Spotify and Apple podcast now!

Get new episodes a day early and ad free, plus chat episodes, at ⁠Patreon.com/momsandmysteriespodcast⁠ . 

Check-out ⁠Moms and Mysteries⁠ to find links to our tiktok, youtube, twitter, instagram and more. 

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Hey guys, this week we're bringing back one of our older episodes, and this is a story of Michael Master Marino, also known as the Body Snatcher. And we're bringing this episode back for really two reasons. Number one, it was 2020 when this episode first came out, and if we're honest with ourselves, most of us have chosen to block that entire year from memory.

So you may have missed it the first time. Or you may have just forgotten the details. And number two, our bonus episodes this month are covering the Netflix docuseries, the Kings of Tupelo. And believe it or not, that story actually connects to this case way more than a docuseries about Elvis impersonators would ever leave you to believe.

The first bonus episode is out right now, and you can listen by subscribing on Apple Podcast, Spotify. Or at patreon.com/moms and Mysteries podcast. And the other two episodes will be released the next two Wednesdays, September 10th and 17th. But before, let's revisit the wild and unforgettable story of Michael Master Marino.

The dentist [00:01:00] turned body snatcher.

Hey guys, and welcome to the Moms of Murder podcast, a True Crime podcast featuring myself, Mandy, and my dear friend Melissa. Hi, Melissa. Hi, Mandy. How are you? I'm doing fantastic this week. How are you? Good. We've had a full blown 30 minute conversation before this even started. Yeah. So, yeah. But it's great.

It was nice. Good to catch up. Yeah. I feel like we both have just various good news things happening, not just to us, but to people that we know and care about this week. So yeah, it's been a great week. So yeah, I'm very. I'm very thankful and happy for this particular week. So yeah, that's where we're at.

The rest of the weeks. No, good. Throw them out. Yeah, exactly. [00:02:00] This week was fine. Yeah. All right, so we will get right into it. This story this week is a little unusual because it is not a typical murder case, and in fact there technically is no murder at all, but it is a true crime story that still has victims nonetheless.

Everybody has different wishes for themselves and for their loved ones when they pass away, which is why having a living will and a last will are so important when it comes for making sure that your wishes are honored. A last will and testament is designed to put a plan in place for what will happen to your belongings, assets and estate after you pass away.

And a living will is designed to outline exactly what your wishes are for yourself in the event that you cannot make medical decisions. Part of a living will usually includes appointing a healthcare proxy, which is just somebody that you trust to see to it that your wishes are honored. And you can also put in writing what you want to happen with your body in the event of your death, including the type of burial or cremation you want, and whether or not you'd like to donate what they [00:03:00] call anatomical gifts, which is your organs, tissues, and even bones.

The business of tissue recovery for donation is a legal practice, but it does raise ethical concerns for some. Since tissue donation must happen within 24 hours of a person's death, it needs to be very clear what somebody's wishes are in regards to donating their organs and other tissues. In other words, consent is needed from the patient themselves or from whoever has been appointed to make that decision for them.

Today's story is about a man who found himself caught up in the tissue recovery profession, and then found himself in hot water after being caught obtaining human tissue and organs illegally. This story made national news in 2005 with shocking headlines, calling him a body snatcher and a ghoul, which by definition is an evil spirit or phantom, especially one supposed to rob graves and feed on dead bodies.

So that is not a very nice thing for newspapers to print about you and to say that you are. So the [00:04:00] majority of this crime happened in Brooklyn. And before we get into the details of this unusual story, we're going to tell you a little about where it took place in this week's segment of we Googled this city.

Brooklyn is one of the four boroughs in New York City, and as of 2020, there's an estimated population of around 2.6 million people making it the most populated borough in New York. If Brooklyn was actually a standalone city, it would be the fourth largest in the us, which I find to be shocking, but. Not shocking all at the same time.

So at one point in time, Brooklyn was considered a city and in what was called the great mistake of 1898, Brooklyn actually voted to become a part of New York City. From what I read, the people in favor of Brooklyn joining New York did so because they were worried about a growing Chicago, and they thought if all these areas joined forces and all the boroughs became part of the same city, they'd be bigger and thus better than Chicago.

Kind of interesting. Hmm. Years from now, I'm sure future generations will read about the great mistake of 2020, [00:05:00] which is the year we all thought, eh, I'm sure we have plenty of toilet paper. This is a joke that goes back to March. So if you're a fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers, you may have known them by their former name, the Brooklyn Dodgers, but before they were known as the Brooklyn Dodgers, they were known as the Brooklyn Grays and even the Brooklyn Bridegrooms, which is quite a name, but Brooklyn Dodgers.

Wasn't even their full name. It was the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers, and that's because at that time, Brooklyn had a ton of streetcar lines and pedestrians at the time weren't used to these fast moving streetcar, so they were often killed when they tried to move across them, thus needing to learn to dodge the streetcar.

At first, I found this name to be very disrespectful, but then Mandy, I realized a lot of teams are just named after things we're scared of. Even in Florida, we have the Miami Hurricanes. The Florida Gators and the scariest of them all the Florida Atlantic owls. Lastly, I should have [00:06:00] ended there. In 1884, a candy store owner by the name of Leo Hirschfield left his home in Austria for Brooklyn.

He had a daughter by the name of Clara who always asked him to make candy for her and her friends. So he did what any parent that's better than me would do, and use what he had on hand to make something for her using sugar, cocoa, butter, and a few other staples that he had on hand. He made a candy that made all the boys come to the yard.

Leo then sold this invention in his candy store for just a pen. Knee. He wanted to put it in a wrapper so it could be sold individually, but he needed a name for it. So he thought back to what he'd say to his daughter. This is a very long story when she'd ask him to give her some candy, and he said, yes, my little Tootsie, I'll make you some candy.

And thus the Tootsie Roll was born. Oh my gosh. I love that story. I love Toots Roll. Isn't that sweet? Yeah, it's a good story. So I thought, this is my last thing. What if the Tootsie Roll wasn't made in 1884, but it was made in 2020? Mandy, what are the nicknames that we give our kids now and what could the Tootsie Roll have been?

So we have the please, you know where the snacks [00:07:00] are. Just get one yourself. Roll. The, if you will just be quiet. You can play Minecraft until your eyes fall out. Roll. And lastly, the, no, this isn't wine. This is Mommy's Go-Go juice. Wait, why didn't you tell me you were still on a zoom with your teacher? Roll the engine.

That is so true. Oh my gosh. In 2005, a Brooklyn funeral home called Daniel Georgen son Funeral Home went up for sale and was purchased by a woman who has chosen to remain anonymous. Upon taking ownership of this funeral home, the woman developed some concerns over the way the finances were handled by the previous owner, and she was also put off by a practice taking place in the embalming room of the building while she was taking a tour of this business that she had just purchased.

She saw that there was a patient on the table in the embalming room that was being worked on. Specifically the cadaver was undergoing tissue and bone recovery. In addition, she found old receipts that the previous owner had left behind that [00:08:00] showed that bones and tissue collected at this funeral home were being shipped to a company called RTI.

Well, something about this really struck the new owner as being odd, so she reported what she saw to the authorities who then took it to the racket's division of the Brooklyn DA's office to take a look at it. When assistant DA Josh AFF first heard about this strange story, he wasn't even sure if there was any crime being committed, but he wanted to investigate a little further.

Anyway, just to be sure. So for the record, a racket is what is known as an organized act or activity in which the criminal act or activity is some form of a substantial business or a way to earn illegal money regularly. Briefly and repeatedly. So this is known as what everybody has heard, the term racketeering.

To kick off the investigation, Josh Ssha subpoenaed documents from the company RTI, as well as from the Daniel George Funeral Home. So keep in mind, RTI Surgical is a legitimate company that's actually been [00:09:00] around for a while. They began as a small tissue bank at the University of Florida, which I don't hold that against them.

And then they turned and then they turned it into a surgical implant company and finally became a quote, global private label supplier with four world-class manufacturing facilities. Their donor program is a nonprofit that partners with tissue recovery organizations to acquire donated tissue. Once they have the tissue, they put it through the sterilization process and get the tissues ready for transplant.

While pouring over these documents that he had received from RTI, which was boxes and boxes of documents, Josh hha learned that there were other funeral homes that participated in this type of program where they would recover tissues to send to RTI. But that wasn't the troubling part. He also found two papers that should have had the same next of kin signatures on them, but they had two different signatures, and the more he dug, the more he found.

It was soon learned that documents filed with the tissue company called biomedical tissue services [00:10:00] have been forged. Everything from ages, causes of death and more had been altered on several certificates. For example, one certificate said that the donor was 63 in passive, a heart attack, whereas the state death certificate said that the donor was actually 79 years old and died of pneumonia due to a heart attack.

After seeing several examples of this forgery, Josh thought he was onto something. He felt like something was definitely off about this and he wanted to know more. So he subpoenaed the man responsible for biomedical tissue services. Michael Master Marino, a name you won't soon forget. Michael Mastromarino, also known as Dr.

Mike was born on September 16th, 1963 in Brooklyn. He described himself as being a quadruple a personality that's driven. So I think most people know what a type A personality looks like, but for those who might not know, personalities can be classified as either type A, B, C, or D. I think these are old school [00:11:00] classifications, and now everybody just uses their like.

What's the one where you get, you know, I love the NNE a million letters. IT Fpn J or whatever. So I'm not sure the name of that one of people are gonna come for me because that's such a big thing right now. But I guess it used to be the case where it was just A through D. That was your personality type.

Can I be honest? I only knew there was an A, I did not even know. There was other letters, and I know I should have, so I totally thought it was just A and B. I didn't know there was a CD. Oh. So you can come from Mandy for one part and you can come from me for the other part. That's fine. Divide up your hate.

Totally good. So a type A personality is very outgoing, ambitious, organized, impatient, and anxious. And these are the people that are most likely to be called a workaholic. So Michael described himself pretty much as just like a super A type personality. He attended college at the University of Pittsburgh where he played football while working towards a degree in dentistry.

After Michael left Pittsburgh, he attended the New York University College of Dentistry [00:12:00] and eventually obtained his degree and became a dentist who specialized in implant surgery in the early nineties. Michael met his future wife, Barbara while she was working at a tanning salon. So he actually met her, I believe, while he was going in there to also get a tan.

They began dating and those who knew them dubbed them, Barbie and Ken, they ended up having two sons together. And although they seemed pretty perfect on the outside, Michael wasn't actually the greatest partner. He was unfaithful to Barbara on numerous occasions, but his career wasn't an area where he really struggled.

Michael had dental practices in New York and in New Jersey, and he worked with a dental technician named John Polo to write a book about dental implants called Smile. John thought highly of Michael and even called him the Mickey mantle of oral surgeons because Michael was always willing to do surgeries that other doctors wouldn't even attempt, which.

I guess in some cases that does make you a very good doctor and in some cases I would [00:13:00] question like, like I would question your, um, enthusiasm a little bit about doing surgeries that other doctors wouldn't want to do. They're definitely necessary doctors like that for sure. But yeah, the enthusiasm is what I would be more concerned with.

Right. So unfortunately that enthusiasm and confidence didn't always work out very well for Michael. He was actually sued for malpractice on multiple occasions, which NBC news later said may have been normal for a doctor who performed these daring medical procedures. But Michael wasn't just sued over these risky procedures he was doing.

He was also sued for other malpractice issues, such as that one patient alleged that Michael left him alone during an operation while he was under general anesthesia, which of course would be terrifying to find out because anything can go wrong when you're under anesthesia. Yeah, you have. That's why the anesthesiologist has to be there and the doctor should be there, and you shouldn't be just under anesthesia with nobody supervising the situation.

No. Aside from these professional errors, Michael also struggled with [00:14:00] substance abuse. In mid 2000, he was found on the bathroom floor surrounded by blood with a hypodermic needle in his arm. He had been shooting up a pain medication known as Demerol, which is used before and during surgery, but this wasn't the only time that Michael was found in a similar state.

In July of 2000, Michael was arrested after he got into a car accident, and he was found to be under the influence of a controlled substance. He was high on Demerol and cocaine at the time of the accident, and he was arrested for being in possession of those drugs as well as possession of a hypodermic needle.

The charges were dropped later, but Michael was required to submit a urinalysis when it came back positive for controlled substances. He willingly offered to give up his medical license for six months and attend rehab. However, as noble of a gesture as that was, that's not what Michael actually did.

Instead, he continued to practice dentistry, but without a license. This was the second time in his career that he had done this. When he got caught, [00:15:00] Michael was barred from practicing dentistry for four years. Over the next year, Michael was in and out of rehab four different times. Michael later alleged that he'd suffered back problems after playing college football, and that's when he became addicted to painkillers and struggled with them for years to come.

And there's so much more to this story, and we're gonna get right back into it after a quick break to hear a word from this week's sponsors. And now back to the episode, before the break, we had just mentioned that Michael Mastromarino had lost his job as a dentist because he had been caught. Driving under the influence, and he was using different painkillers and illegal substances.

So without this career in dentistry to lean on, Michael had to get creative and find new work. According to the New York Times, sometime in 2001, Michael became licensed to supply tissue banks and manufacturers of biological surgical instruments. Also, in 2001, Michael formed his own company to operate under, and it was called Biomedical [00:16:00] Tissue Services, and he operated out of the Daniel George funeral home.

Business was booming, and before Michael knew it, he had several companies waiting for his next shipment of recovered tissue to be distributed and used on patients in need. In michael's own words, biomedical tissue services became a premier recovery tissue bank. In the tissue recovery business, there is of course a huge discrepancy between supply and demand.

So Michael grew his business to include other funeral homes in the various New York City boroughs, and eventually even branched out to New Jersey, although he had several people working under him to help harvest these bodies. There were two men in particular who played the biggest roles. Their names were Lee Cruceta and Chris Razzi.

Michael's wife, Barbara knew that her husband was in the tissue harvesting business, but she assumed that he was operating within the law. However, Michael had not been operating his business with laws or ethics supporting his practices. What Michael [00:17:00] was doing was in fact, illegal. It was, in my personal opinion, also very disrespectful and pretty horrific.

Instead of obtaining cadavers through a safe and legal means, Michael was taking tissue and bone from people whose family did not give their consent. He would contact funeral homeowners and offer to buy harvest tissue for $1,000 per body, which he would then turn around and make between 10 to $15,000 from after he surgically removed various organs, tissues, and bone to sell to the processing facilities.

Michael primarily worked with the company's RTI Lifestyle and Tigen, which are all legitimate and legal companies that you can look up and find. They're still in business today. So Michael and his two main employees would go to these funeral homes and they would be granted access to a recently deceased person.

They would then remove arms, legs, bones, ligaments, tendons and skin for donation while leaving what remained in a bag for cremation. And that's only [00:18:00] if the body was to be cremated. If the body was supposed to be buried, Michael and his staff would carefully remove the bones and then replace them with PVC pipes.

Once the tissues were extracted from the bodies, they were put on ice and taken back to the biomedical tissue services lab and then sent to the processing facilities. Each facility that Michael worked with received certain different types of tissue from him. So he had one company that he would send bone to.

He had one company that he would send, you know, ligaments to. And so he had all these different companies that he was working with. So if you're anything like me, you're probably sitting there thinking you had more information about how exactly tissue harvesting works or is supposed to work, and luckily we have more information handy.

It's pretty clear by now that tissue banks are just facilities that recover and store bone and tissue until they can be distributed for use on live patients. The entire process of tissue recovery and processing is governed by mandatory universal requirements that apply to. All tissue banks, the requirements include records management, consent [00:19:00] practices, donor screening, and testing, tissue processing and more.

The National Organ Transplant Act actually says that tissue cannot be bought or sold. So tissue banks get around this by simply being reimbursed for cost of recovering the tissue, which includes obtaining the tissue, processing it, storing it, and distributing it. So they don't charge a fee for the organs or tissues.

They're essentially charging for the work it takes to obtain the tissue and get it ready for transplant. Of course, there is a cost for that sort of thing. In a typical legal organ and tissue donation scenario, a tissue recovery organization is called when a person dies, the organization then does an initial check to determine whether or not the donor is eligible.

Eligibility is based on numerous factors including age, cause of death, severe chronic infections, serious chronic inflammatory disease, autoimmune disease, IV drug use in the last five years, cancer, HIV, and hepatitis. As we said before, all tissue must be recovered within 24 hours of death. [00:20:00] There are many types of tissue that can be harvested for donation.

Most people immediately think of vital organs as being the main tissue to be donated, but you can also donate your corneas, tendons, heart valves, veins, skin bones, and birth tissue. So when I worked for orthopedic, I think we talked about this a little before, but I, um, would schedule the surgeries and.

Scheduling ACL surgeries. And that would be like your option. Do you want a cadaver tendon or do you wanna use your hamstring? And when people first heard cadaver tendon, they were like, excuse me, what are you talking about? And so the doctor, of course would have to explain it to them, but it's pretty amazing that they can do that.

And like I would literally be like, oh, Thursday we have two acls. One's a cadaver tendon. And a cadaver tendon would show up. They would like ask for information for the person. But it was so interesting, you know, that they're able to do that. Yeah, but it makes sense that that would actually be the better option to use human tissue instead of something synthetic.

And I guess like. I would probably accept cadaver [00:21:00] tissue instead of cutting into a different part of my body and taking from there, because that just seems like it could potentially also go wrong. I don't wanna cut into my hamstring to fix, you know what I mean? Like I don't wanna Yeah, you can. Cause it's all always a personal preference on that sort of thing, but Yeah.

But there's risk. There's risk involved with both of them. But there's stuff where like you get bone grafted from another part of your body, but. You know, the doctor would always talk to you about what your options are. And here's, here's how some people do, some people do better with this, but he was always, the one I worked for was always very big on cadaver tendons because the recovery could be a lot harder if you're using, so now you have your knee having surgery and now your ham hamstrings involved.

Right? So it's, it's, it's a lengthier process, but again, that's just personal preference. So these tissues that we're talking about can be used for so many purposes like surgery, but also including burns torn ligaments, restoring mobility, and repairing structures such as teeth, skin, and spinal components.

The American Association of Tissue Banks says that human tissues are more easily [00:22:00] incorporated into the human body and cause fewer complications than synthetic or animal products like Mandy was saying. So one donor can help more than 75 different people, which is completely remarkable. According to organ donor.gov, there are around 156 million US citizens currently registered as organ donors.

The practice of tissue transplantation began in 1949 when the US Navy Tissue Bank opened and successfully transplanted bone soft tissue and corneas. Over the next 40 years, more than 300 tissue banks were formed, and in 1993, the FDA started regulating them. It's estimated that over 1 million tissue transplants involving human tissue are performed each year.

However, it still isn't enough. An average of 21 people per day die while waiting for a lifesaving organ transplant. There are over 120,000 people currently waiting for a transplant, and another name is added to that list [00:23:00] every 10 minutes. So with all that said, you can easily understand how organ and tissue recovery is a pretty big business.

Due to the issues with supply and demand, companies will pay high dollar for this vital and sometimes life-saving material. And even though it shouldn't be this way, you can also understand how someone that might not have the best intentions would easily be able to take advantage of this opportunity to make a lot of money.

And that's what happened in the case of Michael Mastromarino and Biomedical Tissue Services. As we mentioned before, Michael was working with several funeral homes to buy bodies from them so that he could harvest the tissues. The first funeral home where Michael performed this procedure was at Daniel George and son Funeral Home.

But the owner at that time who was named Joseph Nelli, also owned another funeral home, so he would call Michael anytime he had a body for harvesting. Over the course of his time working with Michael, he made about a hundred thousand dollars and provided Michael with about a hundred bodies. [00:24:00] At some point, Michael got in touch with the owners of a Pennsylvania funeral home.

They were brothers named Louis and Gerald Garone and James McCafferty. The brothers actually owned different funeral homes in the Philly area, but they also co-owned a crematorium with James McCafferty. James owned his own funeral home named after himself, James McCafferty funeral home in 2004. Michael approached this group and asked if they give him corpses in exchange for a thousand dollars per body.

Michael really wanted to work with these guys because since they owned a crematorium, it would be a lot easier for Michael to recover the tissue from those patients since he didn't have to worry about reconstructing their bones with PVC. However, the Garone brothers were just as shady as Michael was.

They never provided Michael or his company with death certificates, consent forms, or the names of their necks of kin, and they gave Michael Corpses that were more than 75 years old and had diseases including cancer, HIV, and Hepatitis. Essentially, they provided him bodies that [00:25:00] would definitely have been ineligible for donation, even under the best of circumstances.

Not only that, but it was a regular occurrence for the brothers to call Michael about picking up a body only to have the body sit in an unrefrigerated alley sometimes for days before Michael would pick them up. In total, the Garone brothers and their partner James, provided Michael with 244 corpses and received more than $245,000 in return.

Oh my gosh. I just, it doesn't. None of this computes to me. Like there's still people, they still have families. I just don't understand the, I don't understand wanting money that much. It just does not compute to me whatsoever. Right. So there were also three other funeral homes in the New York City area that provided bodies, but Little is known about them because their role wasn't as big as the others we mentioned.

And we're gonna get right back into this story after one last break to hear word from this week's sponsors, and now back to the episode. Aside from the fact that harvesting someone's tissues and organs without consent is morally and ethically [00:26:00] wrong. Another major issue with the way Michael was conducting this business was the fact that he was taking tissue from diseased corpses and then lying about it.

One of the ways Michael got away with this was by forging official documents and replacing blood samples from diseased corpses with non-disease blood so that it would pass the processor's tests. Gosh. I just can't even imagine. This is a lot of work to, I mean, I guess you are talking about a lot of money, so maybe they were just fine, but this is a lot of effort to go through just to pull this kind of a scam of this level and Yeah, and the depths that you have to go to, like as a human being to do something like this.

Right. It's crazy. Right. So as we mentioned before, every donor has their blood tested and vetted before the processing companies are allowed to accept the tissue. So Michael would forge this information to kind of get around that. This was really a problem because a living person who received the disease tissue would of course be at a risk of [00:27:00] contracting the disease themselves.

For example, a famous BBC broadcast host based in New York named Alistair Cook, passed away in March of 2004 due to lung cancer that had metastasized to his bones. Alistair was 95 years old at the time that he died. According to FDA regulations, harvesting bones from a cancer patient is prohibited and so is harvesting tissue from someone who is very old at the time of their passing.

However, Alistair's body was transported to a Manhattan funeral home where it was harvested for its bones. The bones were then sold for $7,000 and the remains of Alistair's body were cremated and given to his family just two days after his body arrived at the funeral home. So this all happens very quickly.

Wow. And you can imagine too, in the families, you know, they've just lost a loved one. They're not thinking that the funeral home is doing any kind of weird, shady business. Yeah, they're, they're grieving and they have just experienced this traumatic loss in their life. And especially if they're, they're giving the remains that, you [00:28:00] know, the cremated remains back in a timely fashion.

There's just no way that you would really know, and that's the part that like is really upsetting, I think. And I can see how some of the victims in this story, who of course, are the living family members, how it would be just extremely upsetting to learn that something like this happened to your loved one.

So Alistair's family never signed a consent form for his bones to be harvested. It was later determined that the documents had been falsified to say that Alistair was only 85 years old and had died of a heart attack. So the recipient of Alistair's bones may not even be aware that they actually received the bones of a very old cancer patient.

In another example, a woman named Dana Ryan contracted hepatitis after receiving tissue from one of Michael's cadavers. She told her story on the documentary titled Body Statures of New York, and you can actually find that on Amazon. It's really heartbreaking to hear about her journey and how she came to need human tissue donation and only to end up with this lifelong condition that, of course, negatively affects her life.[00:29:00] 

Yeah. Or the rest of her life. All of this was going on for years until in 2005 when the new owner of Daniel George's son Funeral home tipped off the authorities. Very quickly after the assistant DA Josh aff subpoenaed Michael, Michael hired himself an attorney named Mario Gallucci. We're not sure what Mario's reputation was like back in 2005, but as of 2020, he was renowned as one of the top 100 national trial lawyers, and he's well known in the New York and New Jersey area for his work in handling some of the most difficult criminal cases in the States, he's known as an advocate for those who've been charged with the most serious state and federal crimes.

He's been featured in several papers, including the New York Times and the New York Post. When Michael first met with his newly hired attorney, the first thing he did was tell him that everything he was doing was legal. Michael was adamant that he was not operating an illegal business or acting unethically, and Mario Gallucci believed him.

But he still had to do his own research. [00:30:00] The topic of tissue recovery isn't something that most people know a ton about. In fact, most people probably don't think much about it at all. So Mario needed to educate himself on the work of gathering human tissue for donation so he could best help Michael.

After doing a little preliminary research, Mario learned that tissue recovery was a thing and that it was perfectly legal and legitimate. So he and Michael met with Josh AFF and told him that Michael wasn't doing anything illegal. They also told the DA's office that Michael had no idea that anyone was forging documents.

Josh hha didn't believe a word Michael was saying, and he knew he wanted to investigate a bit more. So he started looking up the families and asking them if they ever consented to body harvesting of their loved ones. Josh said that 99.9% of the people they asked said they did not give their permission, and these families were shocked and devastated to learn that Michael and his team had essentially stolen their family members' body parts.

In some of the cases, Josh asked the family if they would [00:31:00] allow investigators to exhume the body of their loved ones so that they could perform a proper autopsy. As we alluded to before, several of the bodies were found to have their bones replaced with PVC pipe, which by the way, totally, when I first read this, I told Mandy, like my, my eyes literally popped out whenever I read that about PVC pipe.

I was not familiar. That is a very typical practice with tissue harvesting, but that's only if your family is consented. The biggest piece of suspicious evidence was all of the switched blood samples. Some of the processing companies that did business with biomedical tissue services still had blood and tissue samples sent from them, and they were able to run some tests.

It was determined that the blood samples did not match the tissue samples they were assigned to. With this information, the DA's office contacted Michael's attorney and told them what they had on him so far. At this point, Michael knew that he couldn't run from the truth anymore, so he finally admitted his role in the scheme and decided to plead guilty on [00:32:00] the charges against him.

The FDA launched their own investigation that lasted four months. They inspected the locations where biomedical tissue services operated, as well as investigated the funeral homes that worked with Michael and his company in January of 2006, the FDA issued an order to cease manufacturing, meaning processing, storing, and labeling after finding significant violations.

The majority of these violations had to do with biomedical tissue services lying on their paperwork. But here's a few more details about what exactly violations they found. So for one, biomedical tissue services did not follow all the steps to determine donor eligibility. The FDA actually found at least eight donors from different funeral homes where Michael had forged their death certificates.

And it wouldn't surprise me if there was actually more. Yeah, they found lies regarding where a donor died, whether it was in the hospital or at home. Uh, they found that biomedical tissue services lied about where the [00:33:00] cadavers were obtained from, and they found that no permission was obtained to recover tissue from these victims, and that the donors and their tissues were not properly stored.

It's like everything you should do wrong, they were doing right. Yeah. So in the fall of 2005, the FDA actually issued a recall on all the tissue that was taken from donors by biomedical tissue services. The recall affected numerous locations across different states, as well as 300 quote unquote tainted products that had been shipped to Canada.

The FDA as well as the CD. C also put out a widespread memo to all physicians letting them know that if they had any patients who received tissue from biomedical tissue services, those patients should be tested for infectious diseases. The main ones they wanted to test for were HIV one and two, hepatitis B and C and syphilis.

Since donor tissue goes through a sterilization process before being used on a living patient, the risk of infection is quite low, but it was still recommended that patients be tested. Sadly, several people, [00:34:00] including the woman we mentioned before, named Dana Ryan did test positive for these diseases.

Unfortunately, Michael had destroyed many of the patient records, so it was mostly impossible to actually determine whether or not the patient contracted the diseases from the donor tissue or whether they contracted it somewhere else. By the end of the investigation, it was determined that around 10,000 people received tissue that was supplied by Michael's company from 1077 donors.

We use that term loosely. People that receive this tissue that is such a massive amount of people and just to even. As the DA or anybody taking a look at this case to just think like, oh my gosh, we have to contact 10,000 people and let them know about this. Like, oh my gosh. Like what a, just a massive case, you know, to have to work through.

Yeah. And because there aren't records like he should have been keeping, or, you know, any of this, then it's kind of hoping people reach out to their doctors hoping, you know, if, if you're doing fine, you're, you might not go to your [00:35:00] doctor all the time. Right. You know what I mean? If a younger person gets this, they still might not know that they had a donor tissue that could have been from somebody.

You know, this whole thing, it's just a mess. So there were more than 12 funeral homes in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania that were involved. Michael himself had made around $4.6 million during his time operating biomedical tissue services. On February 23rd, 2006, Michael was indicted on 122 felony counts, including enterprise corruption, forgery and theft.

Days later, he turned himself in as per the plea deal. During all of this though, Michael had insisted to his wife, Barbara, that he was totally innocent and that the DA had bigger fish to fry. He told her quote, they're trying to get somebody, they're pressing me, end quote. But after Barbara spoke with the DA and heard all the evidence, she realized that her husband was guilty of the crimes he was accused of, and she later filed for divorce, which that's pretty amazing.

You [00:36:00] sometimes hear people standing by their man through the craziest things, but for her to right. Hear all of it and say, oh my gosh, that's great. And there's apparently an issue of, oh, I like this show. Who the bleep did I marry about this case? And uh, we didn't watch it, but it would be interesting. I wanna watch it now to hear Barbara's perspective.

Yeah, I wanted to go look it up and then I didn't have time before we recorded, but I definitely think that would be an interesting one to watch and kind of hear what her thoughts were Yeah. On what her husband was doing. So when it came time for court, Michael pleaded guilty to over 1300 counts in two different states.

In New York. He pleaded guilty to numerous charges, including enterprise corruption, reckless endangerment, and body stealing. He was sentenced to 18 to 54 years in the state of New York. In Pennsylvania. He pleaded guilty to many of the same charges, but also to criminal conspiracy, deceptive business practices, and abuse of a corpse.

For these crimes, he was sentenced to 25 to 58 years, and [00:37:00] these two sentences from New York and Pennsylvania would run concurrently or at the same time. Unfortunately, Michael wouldn't get to see the end of his sentence or really much of it at all. Shortly after being incarcerated, Michael developed liver cancer that quickly metastasized to his bones.

He passed away on July 7th, 2013, at just 49 years old while he was serving his time in Fishkill Correctional Facility in Beacon, New York. Michael wasn't the only person arrested and charged in this crime, though Joseph Naselli was also indicted on 122 felony counts, and also turned himself in just like Michael had done.

Joseph was the Staten Island funeral homeowner who provided bodies to Michael. He pleaded guilty to over a hundred counts, including corruption, body stealing, forgery, reckless endangerment, and unlawful dissection of a human being. He was sentenced to eight to 24 years. Joseph was granted parole on November 3rd, 2015 after serving time [00:38:00] in wood born correctional facility in wood borne New York.

The main two helpers that assisted Michael in the tissue recovery, as we said before, were Chris Razzi and Lee Cruceta, and they were both indicted on many of the same charges, and they both also turned themselves in. Chris Razzi did not take a plea deal. However, he ended up having a bench trial, which is where you just have a trial by judge instead of by a jury.

And usually this is frowned upon by your attorney because the client is really just putting all of their fate in the hands of just one person who's the judge, instead of having their case heard by 12 people who have to talk it out and make a decision. You know, that is a unanimous decision. Unanimous, yeah.

The judge found Chris guilty of 20 counts, and he was sentenced to nine to 27 years, but he was paroled on October 19th, 2015. Lee Cruceta was the other main, what they were calling a cutter for Michael. And they first met after being introduced by the director of orthopedic surgery in the [00:39:00] operating room where Lee worked as an LPN, and he was also a certified tissue bank specialist.

So the director told Lee that Michael was opening his own tissue bank and that Lee should talked to him about working for him. There's a documentary on Amazon, as I mentioned before, that I did watch called Body Snatchers of New York, and Lee is actually in this documentary talking and so is Michael.

This was recorded before he passed away, so this is definitely something worth watching, but you can hear Lee talking about his experience and how he ended up in this. Terrible situation. And when he's talking about this, you can just tell like he truly is remorseful. He's one of those people you see sometimes in crime stories where you, you know, somebody is very obviously remorseful about Yeah.

What they've done or you know, about their role in the crime. And he talks about how he feels like he's disgraced his family and that he really did not realize, you know, what exactly. Of the situation that he was participating in and he really truly feels just terrible about it. So he pleaded guilty to his charges and he was sentenced to eight to [00:40:00] 24 years, and he was also paroled in 2015.

But while he was in prison, he actually wrote letters to the victims, the family of those who had the tissue stolen from them, and those who received the stolen tissue because he said that he wanted to offer himself up to answer any questions that these families may have. And as terrible of a situation as this is, I just really respect him for doing that.

Yeah. 'cause you know, these families had tons of questions. It's really great that he was willing to, you know, kind of swallow his pride and say, I will tell you, you know, whatever, whatever it is to help you heal through this. Right? The Garone brothers and James McCafferty also faced charges. In this case, Lewis and Gerald Garone each owned separate funeral homes in Philadelphia, and they also co-owned the Liberty crematorium with James.

Apparently when Michael found out he was being investigated, he told the brothers and James to burn their funeral homes down to destroy the evidence. But instead, the men burned all their records in the crematory. When investigators showed up a few days [00:41:00] later, they said their records were ruined in a flood.

How convenient The brothers were also caught for filing fraudulent forms, seeking reimbursement for funeral services provided to people in poverty. Even though they had already been paid by the clients, they received over $75,000 in that scam. In October of 2005, the three men were all charged individually with hundreds of different counts.

Lewis and Gerald Garone pleaded guilty to numerous counts. They were each sentenced to eight to 20 years. Gerald was released in July of 2019, but Lewis is still serving his time. James pleaded guilty and he was sentenced to less time than the brothers, just three and a half to 10 years. There's nothing in the research that says whether or not he's still in jail, but it's safe to assume that he's probably been released by now.

There were also seven other funeral home directors and biomedical tissue services employees that pleaded guilty to various crimes related to this illegal tissue recovery scam. Following the sentencing of those involved, over 900 people that [00:42:00] received stolen tissue brought civil suits against the processors who purchased the tissue from Michael's company.

The company stood by their practices and said that their sterilization methods were top-notch and that no one should have or could have contracted a disease from donor tissue. Many of the lawsuits were settled out of court, and the processing companies were never formally prosecuted. What a story. Yeah, it is definitely a different type of crime story.

Yeah. Which I like doing every now and then. I know, of course the nature of a True Crime podcast is usually stories about murder, right. But there's of course a lot of different. Crimes that happen in the true crime world. Yeah. And this is one that you certainly don't hear about all the time and it does make you wonder how often this kind of thing happens and, and they just don't get caught.

And that's kind of the scary part I think for me. But I also have like that weird anxiety brain where when I hear something like this, I just immediately, my brain is like. Oh my gosh. This is a thing. This is a thing that happens all the time. It's probably not. No. You know, I'm sure like [00:43:00] it's probably not really a thing, but I just immediately think the worst and I'm like, that's a thing.

I never thought of that. Now I have to think about you. But it's, it's such a wild and crazy story. And watching that documentary, listening to Michael talk about it, whether he did or didn't know that what he was doing was illegal, was really irrelevant, because even if you didn't know it was not legal, surely you knew that it was not.

Right, right. You still have a sense of like right and wrong, and it just blows my mind that he did this and went to these lengths, like you said, and just the complete improper practice of doing any of this type of business, right, of tissue harvesting, just absolutely terrible and horrifying and so sad for the families who had to find out that that's what happened to their loved one.

There was a man. I can't remember his name now, but he was in that documentary and he was talking about his father passing away and his dad had lived this really long and hard life and after he passed away, the family just wanted to lay him to rest and didn't, you know, want him to be messed with anymore and, and.

Certainly didn't want his body [00:44:00] harvested for anything. Right. And they found out what had happened and it really affected this man deeply that that happened to his father. Yeah. Because that was absolutely not what his final wishes were. Right. Or what he wanted. And that's just so sad because this is just one of those things that can't be undone.

Yeah. You know, once, once something like this happens. It's just, it's happened and now you have to live with it and learn how to move on and kind of accept that that happened. Yeah, it's just terrible and really, really sad all around. Yeah. So yeah, this was really an interesting story. Haley researched this one for us and I just wanna thank her so much.

I love Haley's research. Yes. But yes, very, very crazy, crazy story. Yeah. Alright, Melissa, are we ready to turn the page and do last thing before we go? Let's do last thing before we go part two. We get to Doover. This is a remix, a takeover or wait, a takeover? Not a takeover. A a retake. I'm calling it a remix because that sounds cooler and that's not true.

Remix. Yeah, so last week we had a little audio hiccup and I've actually had a few people write to me and they were like, what happened? It was really nothing [00:45:00] crazy. We just actually had an audio hiccup and so, uh, part of it didn't come through, so we didn't have lasting before we go last week and this week.

We are going to have less. There you go. We go. So there you go. So the question that we're gonna talk about this week is about foods that we just do not like the texture of and just can't stand. So Melissa, we already know you don't like. Taco shells or burrito shells. And you don't like pasta, so tell us some other things that you just cannot stand the texture of when you're eating.

Okay. I ended up googling this 'cause I wanted to give you new answers 'cause I knew there was more things I hated and so I googled like terrible textured foods and I got new ones, so I hate. They're not taco skins, they're burritos. Wait, no. Yeah, I call them taco Skins. Skins. They're so why do you call 'em skins?

Because that's what it feels like and it feels like I'm choking and it's terrible, and I found out one other noodle I will eat, you know? Um, like a hibachi restaurant. The like noodle the noodles that you get with your meal. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. I'll eat that. I [00:46:00] love, yes, I love those kind of noodles too.

It's very similar to spaghetti, so I think if it's in the same vein of spaghetti, I can do it. But give me like a. Lasagna noodle. What? That is just a choking hazard. It's illegal in my house. So my other ones is our cottage cheese. Oh. Oh, no, you're, you're, you are dead wrong about that. Cottage cheese every day.

I love cottage cheese. Hold on. No, not every day. Every day I eat cottage cheese and I put half of an avocado inside and it's just delicious. It's so good. And yeah, then I put like salt and pepper and no, that doesn't help. Sometimes I put dried, sometimes I put dried onion flakes in it. I just go. I just go wild.

I love cottage cheese. Oh my gosh. I don't know if I've ever told this story, but when I was younger, my mom made me eat everything off my plate and I had cottage cheese and I just cried and cried and had to sit there and decided to put mustard in it thinking that would help. No, it did not help things at all.

And then I had to eat, you know, nasty mustard cottage cod cheese. Oh my [00:47:00] gosh. You know how you might like it? No, no. I know somebody who puts, I know somebody who mixes applesauce in their cottage cheese and like, I don't dunno if that makes it sound better or more for you, but No, you're saying something I kind of like and mixing it with something I despise and thus ruining two things, or at least one thing.

Oh my gosh. So gross. Yeah. Well, cottage cheese is so versatile. You can have it with fruit or. Apparently salt and pepper and avocado. I could pick up, uh, use bandaid on the ground and put that with avocado, and that doesn't make it a good food. Oh my gosh. What's wrong with you? Okay, next one nicely. The next one is okra, like fried okra.

It's slimy. Ew. It's so gross. That's the worst. There's like, I love, you'd think the fried part. I'd be like, I'll, I'll fry it. I'd fry my big toe and eat it. No, I wouldn't, but I'd fry my big finger and eat it. Or my thumb, that's a thumb. I'd fry that and eat it. But okra, it's slimy. So you get like a great flavors, salt and pepper and [00:48:00] fried, and you think cheese in your mind and then you end up with a slimy green okra.

That's so gross. That is offensive. Oh my gosh. Years ago I tried out this crazy like fad diet. I mean, and it was like fine. But one of the things that they did, like they had these different drinks and things like shakes that you could make or whatever, and one of them was this chocolate shake thing and it was made with okra.

I'm not even kidding. Like it was, you put it in a blender, like you put like a half a cup of okra in and you put in your cocoa powder and your sweetener and then you put in, I don't know what else. There was a few other things and so I made it one time. Right, and like. It was just awful. It is as awful as it sounds.

Yeah. It just like, you don't even have to have more of a story than that. Just, I believe you. It was terrible. It was like chocolate okra. But even when you grind it up frozen like that, it still is slimy. It was so gross.

I, no, no, no, that's, no, that's too much for me. I can't do it. And last week I told you this and I don't think you believe me, but I'm sticking to it 'cause I tried [00:49:00] it one more time. I don't like. Cold water and I figured out what it was, and I've already told Mandy this, but if you've ever had any colonoscopies or like you were saying, the glucose test that you take when you're pregnant, Uhhuh, I had to take a couple of those, but then I took two, I had two colonoscopies in a week and you have to drink all that stuff and they say refrigerate it.

So after that. It's just a thing. Cold water tastes like a colonoscopy prep to me. I can drink it lukewarm all day long, but I'm just like ready to run to the toilet and get my business done after I drink one sip of freezing cold water. It's terrible. You just have like associated it with It is, it's like a Pavlov's dog thing.

I'm like, I can't do this. There's my bell. I gotta go. Oh my God. What about you, Mandy? All right. Okay, so there's not much that I have a problem with that I take issue with food wise and like as I said last week to you that didn't get saved and recorded. I'm a pretty adventurous eater. I think a lot of people know that by now.

But there are some things that I just cannot do, and as much as I love [00:50:00] seafood and shellfish, I will eat muscles. I will eat crab legs, I'll eat shrimp. I mean, I'll eat anything in the seafood family, but I cannot choke down an oyster. It doesn't matter if it's steamed raw. If I have a hundred pounds of Tabasco sauce and you know, horse radish, it doesn't matter.

I can't do it. It just makes me horse radish. There's, that makes it so much worse. Well, I mean, I feel like people have to put it on there just to mask the nastiness of this like booger thing going, oh, Mandy, why did you say that? We were all picturing it. Why did you say it? Ew. So yeah. So oysters are definitely a no go for me.

Something else I eat. Oh gosh, this thing. But I don't always love it and I usually have regrets. So cooked spinach. So not only is it very irritating when you open a giant bag of fresh spinach and you start cooking it and you realize that you only have one version of spinach, like by the time you cook it.

Um, but the way your mouth feels like after you eat spinach, it makes my teeth feel fuzzy and weird [00:51:00] and very similar to how you feel when you drink red wine. Okay. And so some people might be like, what are you talking about? Trust me, this is a thing, and I actually looked it up like what is the reason that spinach makes your mouth feel?

Fuzzy is the only way I can really describe. I would love to see that Google search and Google being like, this is, we're not doing this. Yeah. Goya. So as it turns out, right, so as it turns out, you get this weird mouth feeling because there's tannins in spinach and it is the same with red wine and that.

Causes this reaction, I guess, in your mouth, and it just makes you have this weird, gritty, grimy, disgusting feeling in your mouth. So that's why I don't like cooked spinach. And to add to that list, I don't like any vegetable that's been overcooked, especially carrots. I feel like that's the worst. I can't do anything that makes me feel like baby food and mushy stuff or anything like that.

I like my, even when I cook vegetables, I like them to be like. A little crunchy. See, I'm probably the opposite. I'm a little picky because I have like a toddler's [00:52:00] palette, so to me I'm like, oh, this carrot's s mushy. I would love to put you in my mouth because to me I want to be as far away from like in its natural state as possible.

Veggie chips. I'll eat them all day. Give me a zucchini. Yeah, I'm good. Thanks. Yeah, I tried making zucchini chips recently and that has not gone well for me. I've tried it twice now and I keep thinking. I keep thinking it's going to replace potato chips into my life and I just need to stop thinking that.

Yeah, some things are just better as the original. Just keep it how it is and, and enjoy the good things. And don't ruin the good things. Yeah, please don't ruin them. I know, I know. So the last thing that I hate and a lot of people love is that grizzly fat. Part of a steak that pieces that are just like, oh, gooey and slimy and fatty, and I know they're full of flavor and maybe they taste delicious.

I wouldn't know 'cause I don't eat them. But something about getting a piece of fat in my mouth and just trying to like even think about chewing it in my teeth. I don't know. I have to spit it [00:53:00] out immediately. I just cannot. I cannot do that. There's something, there's something wrong with that sensation.

So vegetarians and vegans, please close your ears for, for the next 30 seconds, I would have a baby with the fat of like the, I would literally have its baby. I love it so much. I could just put it in my mouth and just sit for a few seconds and just think of what a wonderful life I have in those moments.

It's so fun. And my husband, literally, it's so sad. He just cuts off his fatty parts and hands 'em to me and I just look like just a zombie whenever I eat it. Or what is it? Oh, a cannibal. I look like a cannibal. I'm just throwing that stuff in my mouth. So welcome back vegan and vegetarians. It's over now. I love it.

Give like, just put 'em in a box, like a to-go bag and drop 'em off at my house. I'll eat 'em all the time. Snacks. Oh my movies.

I won't eat beef jerky though. Oh, see, I love beef [00:54:00] jerky. Won't do it. Something I, I mean, the con the concept is weird. It's like dried meat. It is a little strange. You can buy dried meat in like Yeah. And it's like everybody in high school would eat it. And like, I would even smell it and was like, Hmm, I can't do that, but give me some grizzle.

I'll go to town. Right? Oh my gosh. It's the worst when you have beef jerky that has fat like that. Like I have, oh, oh my gosh. That's, see, I couldn't do that. It's making my skin, it's making my skin crawl. Just thinking about it. But I find it interesting that we had different things that we. Didn't, don't like, you know, or that I like the things that you don't like and you like the things that I don't like.

Yeah. So that's, we could order one dinner and just split it in the middle. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Okay. So now I am both hungry and turned off of food for a while, so I dunno how that worked out. So those are the foods that we are repulsed by and also in love with. Yeah.

Perfect. Alright, Melissa, so I think this has been a wonderful, [00:55:00] wonderful time. You can hear this sarcasm in your voice, but Okay, fine. It's been a wonderful time. No, I agree. This was great. It sure has. Okay guys, we will see you back next week at same time, same place with a new story. Have a great week. Bye.

Thanks so much for listening to the Moms and Murder podcast. Make sure to check back with us next week for a new episode. You can also find us@momsandmurder.com where you can connect with us via social media. Please make sure you subscribe and give us five stars because giving us four stars would be a crime.

Thanks so much.