US undertakers admit corpse theft scheme

11.43, Thu Oct 19 2006

Seven US undertakers have admitted being part of a scheme to steal body parts from corpses and selling them for transplants.

They have agreed to co-operate with US investigators who believe more funeral homes were involved in the scheme and further arrests will be made.

The criminal operation saw body parts removed from corpses without the consent of relatives and sold to biomedical companies. The body of veteran BBC broadcaster Alistair Cooke was among those used.

"These ghoulish thieves thought they could pull off the crime of the century, stealing bones from the dead, without any thoughts of their victims' families or the transplant recipients who would receive possibly tainted bone and tissue grafts," Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes said in a statement.

Investigators have evidence that paperwork was changed and that the tissue sold on for transplanting may have been diseased.

In Mr Cooke's case, his age was recorded as 85 rather than 95, and the cause of death was listed as a heart attack instead of lung cancer that had spread to his bones.

Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney Michael Vecchione said: "They falsified documents indicating the bones were of people who had no diseases, when in fact most of them did have diseases - which would make the harvesting of those bones, and the reselling of them, illegal."

The transplanting of tissues such as muscle, skin and bone is common in the US and the trade in implantable body parts is legal, providing certain conditions are met.