Funeral directors who sold body parts sentenced

Louis and Gerald Garzone - brothers whose funeral homes served generations in Kensington - were each sentenced to 8 to 20 years in prison yesterday for illegally selling body parts for use in surgeries.

As their families wept, Louis Garzone, 66, and Gerald Garzone, 48, calmly put their arms behind their backs as sheriff's deputies handcuffed them and led them away from Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Glenn B. Bronson's courtroom.

The Garzones pleaded guilty to selling 244 Philadelphia cadavers to Michael Mastromarino, a disgraced oral surgeon who owned Biomedical Tissue Services Inc., of Fort Lee, N.J., and paid the Garzones $1,000 a corpse.

After the sales were made, between February 2004 and October 2005, Mastromarino would dispatch teams of "cutters" to dissect the cadavers in the Garzone mortuary.

All 244 were bodies to be cremated. Instead, prosecutors say, the Garzones let the bodies be plundered for parts and burned what was left.

Many of the 244 cadavers were not acceptable for use in surgery: too old, decomposing, or containing cancer or the viruses causing HIV and hepatitis.

Bronson yesterday sentenced Mastromarino, 44, to 25 to 58 years in prison.

Mastromarino is serving time in New York on his guilty plea to similar charges there. Officials say he earned almost $4 million selling parts from 1,077 bodies at funeral homes in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Mastromarino, whom Assistant District Attorney Evangelia Manos called the scheme's mastermind, will wind up serving seven additional years in prison as a result of Bronson's concurrent sentence.

Manos had argued for far longer sentences - 30 to 60 years for Mastromarino and Louis Garzone and 25 to 50 years for Gerald Garzone - saying that the "horrific nature of these crimes" warranted them.

The sentencings came after almost five hours of testimony from 39 character witnesses - most members of the Garzones' large extended family.

The witnesses told of the Garzones' good deeds as a stabilizing force serving the poor of Kensington, and of Gerald Garzone's work with troubled teens as a wrestling coach and volunteer at North Catholic High School.

"He allowed me to see a life outside this neighborhood," said James Patrick Savage, one of Garzone's wrestlers, who credited Garzone with saving him from the lure of the streets.

But in explaining his sentence, Bronson spent more time with the emotional, often angry testimony of 35 people victimized by the body-parts scheme. Emotions ran so high that the judge had deputies direct spectators to leave the court row-by-row at the hearing's end.

Some were relatives who had entrusted loved ones to the Garzones only to learn that their relative had been stripped of skin, bones and tendon.

William Carter testified that he drove from Washington to tell the judge about the impact of what the Garzones did to his mother, Rosalie Carter, 81, who died of cancer in January 2005.

"It's hard for me to remember my mother now," Carter said, stifling sobs. "They have inserted a horror movie into the middle of the memories I had for my mother."

Adding to the anguish of the Garzones' former customers was the fact that prosecutors could positively identify only 49 of 244 bodies dissected in the Garzone mortuary on Somerset Street.

Others who testified were recipients of tissue grafts or implants who suddenly learned their future would include testing for HIV, hepatitis and syphilis.

Cynthia Blesi came from Minnesota and testified about how her 17-year-old daughter, diagnosed with cancer at age 10, got spinal bone grafts traced to the Garzone body thefts.

"She's already got cancer. She doesn't need more help," Blesi hissed at the Garzones. "If you needed the money, why didn't you play the lottery? Instead, you played the lottery with my child's life!"

"You have given us all life sentences," added Norman Robert Zappa, of Covington, Ga. Zappa, who has started a Web site for victims of the scam -

» READ MORE: www.victimsofthestolentissue.com

- learned he was a recipient after undergoing surgery to fuse bones in his neck in December 2005.

"This is mind-boggling," Bronson told the Garzones. "I can't imagine how this has impacted their lives."

All three defendants made brief statements apologizing to their families and the victims.

Mastromarino called his conduct "nothing less than disgusting and embarrassing."

Both Garzones tried to reassure victims that the cremated remains they received were actually their relatives' ashes - not someone else's or co-mingled with those of several victims.

"It's hard to comprehend what I've done to you," Gerald Garzone said, addressing the victims' relatives.

Federal health authorities have said as many as 13,000 people worldwide might have received tissue or body parts in the scam.

Defense attorney John Morris, representing Louis Garzone, told the judge yesterday that not one case of illness had yet been linked to any of the illegal tissues used in implants.

The Garzones and Mastromarino pleaded guilty this summer to charges of running a corrupt organization, criminal conspiracy, theft by unlawful taking, theft by deception, abuse of a corpse, and related crimes.

The Garzones also admitted defrauding the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare by getting reimbursed for funerals for deceased indigents who in fact were cremated.

City prosecutors said the state would have reimbursed the Garzones only $250 for cremating an indigent person rather than the $750 it paid for funerals. Gerald Garzone fraudulently obtained $51,750 in welfare reimbursements and his brother $25,250, prosecutors said.

The brothers yesterday paid restitution totaling $307,000 to reimburse the state Welfare Department and customers who paid the Garzones for funerals that should have been covered by welfare benefits.