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Michael Mastromarino, left, is escorted into a courtroom in Brooklyn Supreme Court in 2006.

(Aristide Economopoulos/The Star-Ledger)

Michael Mastromarino

He’s been branded a modern-day grave robber, a ghoul who secretly plundered more than 1,000 cadavers for spare parts in funeral homes across New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Michael Mastromarino, once a dentist in Fort Lee, raked in millions of dollars by selling pilfered bones, skin, ligaments, heart valves and other body parts to tissue reprocessing companies, which in turn provided them to patients awaiting transplants.

Mastromarino never screened the parts for disease, as required by law, and doctored paperwork to change ages and causes of death, flouting a prohibition against tissue from people with cancer, hepatitis and HIV. In 2008, a judge sentenced him to 18 to 54 years in prison.

That term was cut short Sunday morning when Mastromarino, 49, died at a New York hospital. The cause was bone and brain cancer, said his attorney, Mario Gallucci.

"It seems like this in this case, what goes around really does come around," said Karen Delre, a Hazlet resident whose father, James Thornton Sr., was one of Mastromarino’s victims. "When I think of my father, this is the first thing I always think about. He’s not resting in peace. He’s resting in pieces."

Mastromarino, who had been housed in the infirmary at the Wende Correctional Facility in Alden, N.Y., was given last rites in March. In recent days, he was transferred to St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital in Orange County, N.Y.

In this photo released by the Brooklyn District Attorneys Office in 2006, an x-ray of the lower part of a deceased person shows that PVC plumbing pipes were inserted where the bones once were. Michael Mastromarino headed the body-parts theft ring.

Gallucci acknowledged the irony that a man dubbed the "bone-snatcher" by New York City tabloids had succumbed to bone cancer, but the attorney also defended Mastromarino.

"He was a good soul caught in a bad position," Gallucci said.

Mastromarino turned to illegal body-harvesting after a painkiller addiction led to the loss of his New Jersey dental license. Between 2000 and 2005, he employed more than a dozen funeral directors, paying them $1,000 for access to each body.

Then he and his "cutters" went to work, removing parts that would fetch top dollar in the transplant market. His most famous victim was Alistair Cooke, the host of "Masterpiece Theatre."

Mastromarino never obtained consent from relatives. If a body was to be seen at a viewing before burial or cremation, he replaced bones with lengths of PVC piping, authorities said.

Hundreds of people who received body parts supplied by Mastromarino have since filed suit, claiming exposure to potentially deadly diseases.

Delre’s father had cancer when he died. That didn’t matter to Mastromarino, who stole his bones and sold them anyway.

"It was always about the money for Mastromarino," Delre said. "Most of these people were not candidates for donation. He just wanted to get rich fast."

Robin Samoilow’s father, Albert Teufel, was violated by Mastromarino in 2005. The Roselle Park woman said she was "saddened" Mastromarino would not spend decades more in prison.

"This wound is continually opened every time we need to go to a funeral home," Samoilow said. "It is very unfortunate that Mr. Mastromarino chose to go the route of illegal and egregious activities that not only affect the lives of the families whose loved ones were chopped up, but the poor unknowing souls who were the recipients of the diseased bone and tissue."

Karen Delre, of Hazlet, delivers a victim-impact statement in Superior Court in 2009. Former funeral director Stephen Finley, right, allowed "cutters" to steal body parts from Delre's father in Finley's Newark funeral home.

Two New Jersey funeral directors were implicated in the scheme.

Stephen Finley, the former owner of Berardinelli Funeral Home in Newark, served three years in prison. Authorities have said more than 100 bodies were harvested for tissue in his funeral home.

Last month, The Star-Ledger reported that Finley, released in 2012, had recently found work at an Elizabeth cemetery, Rosemount Memorial Park, where part of his job involved handling the dead in the crematory. After the newspaper's inquiry, he was let go.

The other New Jersey funeral director, Robert J. Maitner Jr., gave Mastromarino access to at least 20 bodies, authorities have said. Maitner owned Kiernan Funeral Home and Maitner Cremation Services, both in Belleville.

Maitner, who cooperated with investigators, served six months at Rikers Island in New York under a plea deal with the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. He later pleaded guilty in New Jersey, receiving probation.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified the location of Mastromarino's death. He died at St. Luke's Cornwall Hospital in Orange County, N.Y., not St. Luke's Hospital in New York City.



RELATED COVERAGE

• Convicted body-parts thief took job at crematory, sparking outrage and state probe

• N.J. parole board denies release of Newark mortician who harvested body parts

• Ex-Newark funeral director in prison for stealing body parts admits to practicing without license

• Newark funeral home owner admits to stealing human remains

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