Big jail terms in body parts scandal

To the heartless thieves who stole body parts, he was a number: BM04J132.

To Charlene Ann Williams, BM04J132 was her only son and "my world" - Jason Charles Hasbrouk, a highly decorated soldier who participated in the Mogadishu rescue and in a dangerous Haiti mission, then died at 30 of a debilitating pituitary tumor, which had left him blind.

But no foreign enemy could have desecrated this American hero worse than three co-defendants - sentenced yesterday here - in a national body-parts-for-sale scam.

Cutters pillaged Hasbrouk's body of skin, bones, tendons and other tissue without consent after his organs had been donated to others upon his death in 2004.

Then, Gerald Garzone, a funeral-home operator involved in the scam, folded an American flag, which he turned over with an urn of Hasbrouk's ashes to his grieving parents.

Two years later, Williams, a lieutenant at a Pike County prison, discovered what had happened to her son.

"I lost my breath," she testified. "The room started spinning. I started to sweat. I became one of the families, who I had cried and prayed for only two days earlier."

Williams was one of 73 witnesses - 38 for the prosecution and 35 for the defense - who testified at yesterday's daylong, highly emotional sentencing of Garzone, his brother, Louis, and the scam's ringleader, Michael Mastromarino, before Common Pleas Judge Glenn Bronson.

The courtroom was so crowded, other witnesses lined up in the hall.

All morning, relatives and friends testified how the Garzones cared for family and friends, but had "made a mistake."

Williams, like other witnesses, pointed out that there was "not one [mistake] but 244," referring to the number of corpses illegally harvested here.

"At all times, they knew what they were doing was wrong," she said.

The judge agreed, calling their greedy scheme beyond the bounds of human decency.

In an eloquent 78-minute appeal, Assistant District Attorney Evangelia Manos asked Bronson to sentence Mastromarino and Louis Garzone to 30 to 60 years in prison, and Gerald Garzone to 25 to 50 years.

Manos described the defendants' callousness, lies and crimes as "one of the most vile betrayals of trust."

From February 2004 through September 2005, Mastromarino, an admittedly drug-addicted oral surgeon who founded the now-closed Biomedical Tissue Services in Fort Lee, N.J., bought diseased body parts of 244 Philadelphians who had recently died, for $1,000 per body from Louis and Gerald Garzone and a third funeral-home operator.

The stolen tissue was sent to processing companies, which then sold it to hospitals around the world for implants.

With her head wrapped in a purple scarf, Sandra Madden, of Northwood, Iowa, testified: "I live in pain on a daily basis," after receiving cervical bone from a cadaver, with a falsified death certificate from BTS.

Ever since, she said, she has been treated "like a pariah" by medical personnel. And now, she said, she has been diagnosed with cancer, with no genetic predisposition for it. The defendants have given "each one of us a death sentence," she added.

Red-faced, with a cracking voice, Mastromarino apologized for the "pain and suffering I caused" the victims who received diseased tissue, families whose loved ones were plundered.

"I have many years to think about the wrongs I have committed, in prison," he added.

Bronson told Mastromarino he was "most culpable" as the "architect of a scheme that most of us can't contemplate."

His "egregious" conduct "lacked basic human decency" while putting diseased tissue into "the stream of commerce" to "make money," the judge told him.

But Bronson decided on sentences under state guidelines. Mastromarino was sentenced to 25 to 58 years in prison, concurrent to his 18- to 54-year sentence on related charges in New York. He will serve at least seven more years in Pennsylvania than New York, before he's eligible for parole.

No restitution was ordered because New York authorities had seized all his assets.

Louis and Gerald Garzone, who also apologized to the victims, were both sentenced to eight to 20 years in state prison.

All three were charged with corrupt organizations, conspiracy and various counts of theft by unlawful taking, theft by deception, abuse of corpse. The Garzones also were convicted of welfare fraud, and Louis Garzone was convicted of insurance fraud.

Yesterday, the Garzone brothers paid the court $307,000 in restitution, including $163,000 from Louis, and $144,000 from Gerald.

About $211,000 will go to families whose loved ones were illegally harvested, at $1,000 per family; about $78,000 goes to the state Department of Public Welfare for the Garzones' double-billing for cremation and funeral expenses; and $18,000 to an insurance company for reimbursement of Louis Garzone's phony disability-insurance claims.

A third funeral-home operator, James A. McCafferty Jr., will be sentenced in December.

James Erbs, 42, of Levittown, said he lives in constant pain after back surgery in which he received tissue traced to the Garzones. He called the defendants "villains" whose sentences were "a slap on the wrist."

"I felt the crimes warranted a significant amount more time," he said.

Manos agreed. *