US brothers admit selling corpses

Two brothers who ran a crematorium and a pair of funeral homes in the US have admitted selling corpses to a company that trafficked stolen body parts.

Louis and Gerald Garzone pleaded guilty in Philadelphia to charges including conspiracy, theft and abusing corpses.

They allowed at least 244 corpses to be carved up without medical tests or permission from relatives.

The parts were later sold to doctors for transplants in a scam that made $4.6m (£2.3m).

The scheme's mastermind, Michael Mastromarino, is serving between 18 and 54 years in jail.

He pleaded guilty on Friday to hundreds of further charges that could send him to prison for life.

Documents falsified

Mastromarino's company, Biomedical Tissue Services, took body parts from funeral homes in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Among the corpses plundered was that of BBC presenter Alistair Cooke.

In Philadelphia, Mastromarino paid the Garzone brothers and their partner, James McCafferty, more than $245,000 for at least 244 bodies between February 2004 and October 2005.

After buying the corpses, Mastromarino would send a "cutting crew", led by former nurse Lee Cruceta, to Philadelphia to dissect the bodies.

The body parts were sold around the country for surgical procedures including knee and hip replacements, as well as dental implants.

The authorities have only been able to identify 49 of the 244 bodies sold by the Garzones, since the scam entailed falsifying names, ages and causes of death, to disguise the fact that some parts came from bodies too old or diseased to be harvested legally.

The brothers will remain free on bail until sentencing on 22 October.