What a Cut-Up!

Now here's a story you don't read every day:

Plea deal for body-snatch ring boss

BY WILLIAM SHERMANDAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, January 16th 2008, 4:00 AM

The boss of a multimillion-dollar body-snatching ring will plead guilty to carving up hundreds of corpses at area funeral homes and illegally selling body parts, the Daily News has learned.

Michael Mastromarino - who earned millions of dollars through the ghoulish enterprise - agreed to the deal after lengthy negotiations with the Brooklyn district attorney's office. He will serve a minimum of 18 years in prison.

"He was facing life in prison," said Mastromarino's lawyer, Mario Gallucci, adding his jailed client will appear in court Tuesday to formalize the plea agreement.

As part of the deal, Mastromarino, 44, will cooperate with prosecutors in an ongoing probe of several companies that bought the stolen body parts and then sold them to more than 20,000 transplant recipients throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe. The transplants included bones, skin, arterial valves, ligaments and tendons.

The illegal enterprise ran for more than four years, ending in fall 2005 when The News detailed the operation and an ongoing probe by the Brooklyn district attorney's office. More than 1,400 corpses were illegally harvested. (Read more here...)

How would you like to find out you had one of these parts in you?