Corpse Desecration: What's in it for Me?

When word broke in early October that there had been some devious shenanigans afoot at the Daniel George & Son funeral home in Brooklyn-some underhanded undertaking if you will, involving the harvesting of body parts from the dead without the families' consent-my initial reaction could be pretty well summed up with one word: "So?"

Call it the dirty little secret of the death industry-though it's hardly much of a secret anymore.

Corpse desecration for scientific and medical purposes is a complex and lucrative business. It's also a business that's been around for centuries. Anatomists, it's guessed, have been robbing graves to obtain research specimens since at least the 4th century B.C. Leonardo DaVinci was known to rob the occasional grave in his search for anatomical models. And people have been making a living peddling cadavers and body parts to scientists and doctors since the 16th century.

In the early days of the corpse trade, it was primarily the bodies of recently-executed criminals that were were sold for research purposes. As the business became more organized in later years, medical school slabs were usually occupied by the corpses of the poor and destitute who'd sold their bodies in advance for a few bucks. More often than not back then, though, the corpse brokers didn't worry too much about things like "permission," or properly notarized contracts.

In the 19th century, both Mary Shelly and Robert Louis Stevenson wrote popular stories portraying the seamier side of the profession. It was clear that people were well aware that the practice existed and that graverobbing was fairly commonplace, even if they didn't care to think about it much.

By the time the 21st century rolled around, things hadn't really changed much. Back in 1950, UCLA created the nation's first Willed Body Program, where people could donate their bodies freely and legally for scientific research. By 2004, there were an estimated 150 similar programs set up nationwide. For the most part, the business was a little neater, a little cleaner, a bit more above board. In theory, these institutions gather cadaver and organ donations, then distribute them at no cost to the universities and hospitals which request them, be it for transplants or anatomy classes. Charging money for these donations is illegal.

But demand has always far outstripped supply, which made an old-fashioned black market in body parts an inevitability. Nowadays the black market is more active than ever, with the demand for corpses and parts growing at an estimated five to ten percent annually.

"It's a wild, wild West out there in tissue land, with few sheriffs and a lot of shady characters meeting in the back rooms," Dr. Art Caplan, a professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, said in an interview with the Associated Press last year.

Here's the thing. After you die, virtually every part of your body could theoretically be sold off for some further use. Not just whole bodies for anatomy classes and not just hearts, lungs, and other complete organs for transplants. The skin can be used for skin grafts on burn victims. Corneas, tendons, ligaments, veins, heart valves and fingernails can be harvested, too. Collagen of the dead is regularly injected into the lips of supermodels. Long bones can be used to replace the shattered or cancer-riddled bones of the living. They can also be ground up for use in pharmaceuticals.

And everything-every little part-has a price tag. According to 2004 estimates, heart valves were fetching upwards of $5,000, and skin was being stripped off at about $1,000 per square foot. Whole corpses can go for anywhere between $1,000 and $10,000, depending on the condition of the body and who's doing the buying.

Human life may be pretty cheap, but on the open market the average body could be worth about $150,000, should you strip it for parts, and sell each individually, the way a chop shop might do with a stolen Toyota.

Part of what's feeding the black market is the American attitude toward death. We want the bodies of our loved ones-no matter how desiccated, gnawed up, or wasted away they might be-preserved, protected, and treated with the same respect and dignity they would've received if they were still alive.

(Case in point, witness the WTC Families for Proper Burial, who not long ago were demanding that the ashes of their loved ones somehow be separated out from the 450 tons of WTC ashes which now rest in the Fresh Kills landfill. "I thought we were living in the modern era," one family member was quoted as saying-to which my immediate reaction was, "If we were living in a truly modern era, we'd all be buried in landfills." But that's just me.)

We want our corpses dressed nicely, painted and pumped full of chemicals in order to create the illusion that they're still alive right up to the point when we close the coffin lid and dump them in the ground. We also want them whole. The idea of some fiend harvesting a loved ones' parts-even if those parts could help save someone else-is horrifying to some people. The government has even passed strict laws against corpse desecration. Funny thing is, if more people knew what was involved in the embalming process, what sort of damage is inflicted on the body to create the illusion of "life," well, they probably wouldn't be too upset about a missing bone or two.

If I may be allowed another aside here-this reminds me of a case from rural Wisconsin which was only recently resolved. Two morticians in Hudson, a small town in the northwestern part of the state, were found shot to death in a funeral home in 2002. Suspicion at first fell on a local evangelical cult, which taught that embalming was an evil corruption of the Lord's work. Over the years, leaders of the cult had even been charged with sending death threats to dozens of morticians throughout the state. In the end though, the murders had nothing to do with philosophical differences. The were committed by a priest who believed that one of the morticians in question was about to blow the whistle on him concerning a few "indiscretions" involving young boys. The second mortician just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. As the police finally closed in on the priest after a 3-year investigation, he hanged himself.

But back to the matter at hand. Given that this fear of desecration remains the prevailing attitude in the U.S, it's not surprising that fewer and fewer people are donating their organs, let alone their entire bodies, for scientific purposes. Consider: if the movies have taught us anything, it's that bodies donated to a university will inevitably be used as part of some med student's juvenile prank.

In the '70s and '80s, the corpse industry (both legitimate and otherwise) turned to South America and India for a steady supply of cadavers. But those once-ready supplies have since been cut off as the result of government crackdowns on both sides of that equation.

So where's a hard working bone harvester to turn? Well, where do you find a ready supply of bodies?

This most recent case in Brooklyn was not unique to New York or to the U.S.- and it was hardly unique to the times. What it's proof of more than anything is our collective loss of short-term memory.

Here's a quick recap of a few similar incidents that have come to light over just the past 5 or 6 years.

In 1999, the head of the University of California at Irvine's Willed Body Program, Christopher Brown, was busted for selling six spines to a Phoenix hospital for an estimated $5,000. That he was selling them so cheaply illustrates that he was either new to the business or deliberately trying to undercut his competition. Further investigation revealed that there were a number of bodies in Brown's care that couldn't be completely accounted for, and the university was smacked with 20 lawsuits by family members. Brown was fired but never prosecuted, and Irvine promised it would clean up its act, so far as corpses were concerned.

In 2002, a man named Allen Tyler, who headed up a similar program at the University of Texas-Galveston medical school was fired after it was learned he had pulled finger- and toe-nails off of Lord knows how many of the corpses in his care. These he sold to pharmaceutical companies for an estimated $4,000. It was assumed but never proven that fingernails weren't the only body parts he was selling. Tyler died before the investigation was complete.

In 2003, Michael Francis of Lake Elsinore, CA, pleaded guilty to making over $400,000 selling bits and pieces from over 130 corpses. Francis ran a crematorium, and before shoving the bodies in the ovens, he'd take their heads, bones, whatever he needed, and sell them to a variety of research institutes. He was charged with corpse desecration and embezzlement, and was sentenced to 20 years.

In 2004, the head of the Willed Body Program at UCLA was arrested together with another man on suspicion of trafficking stolen body parts. They weren't terribly bright about it though, as invoices on UCLA letterhead revealed that between 1998 and the time of their arrest, the men had sold nearly 500 corpses for slightly more than $700,000-or a mere $1400 each. They, too, were sentenced to 20 years, and UCLA is up to its eyeballs in lawsuits.

Getting a little closer to home, in March of last year, John Scalia, a Staten Island mortician as well as the head of something called National Anatomical Service (a cadaver brokerage firm), took seven bodies that had been donated for research purposes and sold them to the U.S. Army for $30,000. The Army used the cadavers to test the effects of landmines on a new kind of boot.

In short, they blew 'em up real good.

Scalia said that his business shipped on average about 800 bodies a year to various institutions around the country, and that the Army deal wasn't all that special. It was for scientific research, after all. That's what people sign up for, isn't it?

As far as charging hefty fees for the bodies he delivered, Scalia made the same argument made by so many others in a similar predicament-namely, that he was a mere middleman, a broker. The fees he was asking weren't for the bodies themselves, but rather represented "processing fees" for transportation and the like. It's the legal loophole numerous body brokers have used successfully to avoid prosecution.

On still another side note, it strikes me as interesting that the only person who seems to be doing well these days as far as honest and legitimate body donation is concerned is controversial German anatomist Gunther von Hagens (who has been profiled in NY Press on several occasions). Unlike these others, Prof. von Hagens actually does what he says he's going to do-turn your dead body into a work of art.

Von Hagens, whose "Body World" exhibition has caused a sensation all over the globe, plastinates human corpses before turning them into sculptures which are as educational as they are shocking.

(As it happens, von Hagens' chief rival in the world of plastination, Dr. Sui Hangjin, just opened a small exhibition of his own specimens at the South Street Seaport-though there seems to be some question about the method through which Dr. Hangjin obtains his specimens. According to the Times, it is alleged that he has effectively stepped back a century by using the bodies of China's destitute and unwanted instead of actual, willing donors.)Ê

Some may refer to his work as "desecration," but over the past several years Prof. von Hagens has found that he can hardly keep up with the thousands of people worldwide who are willingly donating their bodies to him for future plastination. After seeing his show, visitors have the option of filling out donation cards. This can also be done online through his website. The response has been overwhelming.

But maybe it makes sense. What von Hagens is offering is a shot at immortality as a work of art, which seems a hell of a lot more attractive than getting blown up by a landmine to test out a new boot.

Or than being involved in the present and Byzantine tale of Joseph Nicelli, former director of the Daniel George & Son funeral home; Michael Mastromarino of the Biotissue Technologies corpse brokerage; and Det. Joseph "Tombstone" Tully, the cop and funeral director who worked at the Bronx Medical Examiner's office.

In early October, the new owners of the funeral home were going through the old financial records when they came across a series of strange transactions. What the records seemed to indicate was that bones and other body parts had been harvested from bodies the funeral home was supposed to be preparing for burial. Further investigation revealed that in dozens, perhaps even hundreds of cases, family members were not informed of this-and worse, that their signatures had been forged on numerous documents giving Nicelli and Mastromarino consent to remove, for instance, thigh bones, which they replaced with broomsticks and PVC piping.

As the investigation continued, things only grew uglier. In at least two instances, not only were authorizing signatures forged, but the cause of death was misreported. Citing the cause of death as "heart disease" instead of "cancer" allowed Mastromarino to sell the diseased bones as healthy specimens for transplantation into living patients suffering from-yes, bone cancer.

At last report, the Brooklyn DA's office, which is behind the investigation, is mulling the possibility of exhuming upwards of 30 bodies as evidence. To date, at least two lawsuits have been filed against Nicelli, Mastromarino, and their partner Joseph Tully. More are sure to follow as more evidence comes to light. I suspect there's a long way to go before we understand completely what was going on there. But already it's clear that the "broker's fee" argument is useless in this instance.

And while this may be one of the most complex body harvesting cases in recent years, it's hardly the only one.

These sorts of things are going on all the time, all across the industry and everyone in the industry knows it. The cases listed above simply involve those people who weren't very good at covering their tracks.

The problem is that these body-snatching scandals have become so public and commonplace in recent years that legitimate willed body programs will likely suffer even further, as people become even more hesitant about donating their bodies to science.

And if that happens, the black market will expand even further with funeral directors and others in the death industry growing more curious about what kind of money can be made on the side with a little piece here, a little piece there, a little something no one would ever notice.