I plundered human tissue from bodies, admits US dentist

Mar 19 2008 by David James, South Wales Echo

THE grave-robbing dentist who stole tissue from corpses that was implanted into 15 South Wales patients has pleaded guilty.

Disgraced former dentist Michael Mastromarino, 44, yesterday admitted 14 separate charges in the United States, including corruption and body stealing.

His plea deal means the mastermind of a body-snatching ring that plundered 1,400 corpses for tissue and bones will serve between 18 and 54 years behind bars.

One South Wales victim, Delwyn Herridge, 40, who received stolen tissue in a bone graft at the University of Hospital of Wales, Cardiff, in 2005, criticised the American judge who allowed the plea deal.

Dad-of-three Mr Herridge from Ebbw Vale said: “I think he should have a life sentence for what he has done. I think 18 years isn’t enough. If he gets 30 years plus then that really is his life over and done with.”

Suzanne Green, from Caerphilly, is another patient who is known to have received the stolen bone tissue.

Mr Herridge also called for any money that the dental surgeon’s family made from the scandal to be confiscated.

In Brooklyn’s Supreme Court yesterday, Judge John Walsh heard Mastromarino and his associates raked in more than $4.6 m (£2.3m) from the body-snatching scandal. Among the corpses the gang hacked up at funeral homes in New York and Pennsylvania was that of veteran BBC man Alistair Cooke.

Detectives revealed the gang had made Mr Cooke appear a suitable donor by falsifying his cause of death by listing it as a heart attack, not cancer, and listing his age as 84 rather than 95.

According to court documents, Mastromarino paid undertakers $1,000 (about £500) for each corpse and forged next-of-kin permission documents.

In court yesterday, photographs were released of exhumed corpses boned below the waist with PVC pipes in place of limbs.

Dressed in a button-down Ralph Lauren shirt and blue jeans, a bespectacled Mastromarino calmly answered “yes” as prosecutors outlined the gruesome accusations in a nearly hour-long confession.

“What he did was wrong,” his lawyer, Mario Galluci, said outside court. “I feel horrible for the victims in this case. There is no excuse for what he did.”

The 15 South Wales victims are among 40 Britons who received grafts bought from Mastromarino’s firm by Swindon, Wiltshire, based Plus Orthopaedics.

Mastromarino’s wife, Barbara, who will forfeit $190,000 as part of more than $4m that has to be repaid, declined to comment. The two have been married for more than 15 years and have two children. Mastromarino will be sentenced in May.

Several other still face charges, including Mastromarino’s chief assistant nurse and an embalmer.

david.james@mediawales.co.uk