NY-- A former dentist charged with stealing body parts from more than 1000 corpses pleaded guilty in a New York court today, in a case that will likely see him sentenced to at least 18 years in jail. Michael Mastromarino stands charged with illegally harvesting organs, body parts and tissue from the bodies of people who never consented to be donors, including veteran BBC broadcaster Alistair Cooke. Mastromarino, 44, whose company sold the human tissue for medical implants, pleaded guilty under the terms of a plea deal that would see him facing 18 to 54 years in jail instead of a life term.

"He recognises that what he did was wrong and he admitted that in court today," said his lawyer, Mario Gallucci.

But he blamed the companies that bought the tissue for pressuring his client into doing what he did.

"He started a legitimate business. He recognised that there was a need for tissues from dead bodies because of major advances in medicine," he said.

"The problem is that things began to go wrong because he was put under a lot of pressure by the processors in this case to get them more and more tissue and as the demand for tissue increased, you know, he began to cut corners.

"Unfortunately it's not legal to do that."

Mastromarino, who was charged in 2006 along with three other defendants, allegedly made millions of dollars selling the unscreened body tissue, in a ghoulish case compared by prosecutors to "a cheap horror movie".

The four face charges including enterprise corruption, body stealing and opening graves, as well as unlawful dissection.

One of Mastromarino's co-defendants has pleaded guilty, another is on trial while the third is not being actively pursued on medical grounds.

Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes described in detail at the time the four were charged how they allegedly replaced the bones of their victims with lengths of piping to avoid arousing suspicion at the victims' funerals.

According to the indictment, the team forged death certificates and donor consent forms to create the appearance that the tissue was harvested legally.

Though transplant guidelines set age limits and health requirements for donors, the defendants falsified the records.

In the case of Cooke, who was 95 when he died in New York in 2004 from lung cancer, the stolen body parts were listed as coming from a healthy 85-year-old who died of heart failure.

The accused tossed gloves, aprons, and other incriminating evidence into the bodies before sewing them back up, according to prosecutors.

"What happened here ... is like something out of a cheap horror movie," prosecutors said at the time.

"But for the thousands of relatives of the deceased whose body parts were used for profit, and the recipients of the suspect parts, this was no bad movie. This was for real."

According to prosecutors, the defendants allegedly harvested bones and organs from 1077 corpses over a five-year period and then sold them on to transplant companies for use in surgical procedures around the world.

Under the terms of the plea deal, Mastromarino was expected to co-operate with prosecutors in any further investigations against the companies that bought the stolen body parts.

On the open market, one body can bring in as much as $US250,000 ($271,532) for harvesting and transplant companies, according to prosecutors.

Mastromarino is due to be sentenced on May 21. 

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23401012-2,00.html