But not profitable enough.

Removing bones, skin and tendons from corpses was time-consuming and expensive: PVC pipe was needed to fill out the deboned limbs if there was a viewing.

That all changed in early 2004, a city prosecutor said yesterday, when Mastromarino met three Philadelphia morticians who had just what he needed - a crematorium.

No need to dress up bodies to be cremated, said Assistant District Attorney Evangelia Manos, or waste any time surgically removing the parts to be sold.

Manos outlined the macabre details of Mastromarino's black-market trade for a Philadelphia judge as Mastromarino pleaded guilty to charges that legally could put him behind bars for more than eight millennia.

In February 2004, Manos said, before Mastromarino found his Philadelphia connection, he and his "cutting team" from Biomedical Tissue Services Inc. harvested parts from 12 bodies.

A month later, after allegedly partnering with undertaker-brothers Louis and Gerald Garzone, Mastromarino's team took parts from 23 bodies in Philadelphia - and in August 2005 pushed production to 57.

Authorities say Mastromarino paid the Garzones and their partner, James J. McCafferty Jr., $1,000 a corpse in a scheme that earned him almost $4 million.

The scheme also put about 13,000 transplant patients at risk from body parts from people with cancer or infected with HIV or hepatitis.

Already serving an 18- to 54-year sentence in New York, Mastromarino's guilty plea here includes a promise to testify, if needed, at Tuesday's trial for Louis Garzone, 65, of Kensington, and Gerald Garzone, 48, of North Wales.

Louis Garzone's attorney, Howard J. Kaufman, declined to comment.

William J. Brennan, Gerald Garzone's attorney, declined comment about whether his client might also plead guilty: "Anything is possible. All I know is that I and Mr. Garzone will be in Courtroom 901 at 9 a.m. on Tuesday."

Jury selection is to begin there Tuesday before Common Pleas Court Judge Glenn B. Bronson.

Mastromarino, 44, of Fort Lee, N.J., the admitted mastermind of the multistate body-parts trafficking scheme, pleaded guilty to 1,353 counts, including charges of engaging in a corrupt organization, theft involving the parts stolen from 244 dead people without the survivors' permission, deceptive business practices, forgery, tampering with public records, and abuse of corpse.

Mastromarino - a tall man with a shaved head and wire-rimmed glasses who wore a green prison jumpsuit - seemed to sag under the weight of the charges. As the gruesome details of his trade were outlined, Mastromarino's head drooped until chin touched chest.

Bronson set sentencing for Oct. 22.

Mastromarino's plea exposes him to a fantastical maximum sentence of 8,672 years in prison and fines totaling $18.6 million.

Defense attorney A. Charles Peruto Jr. said he expected a "tough sentence," even though Mastromarino will get credit for accepting responsibility for his crimes.

Mastromarino's guilty plea followed one on Aug. 13 by McCafferty, 38, part-owner with the Garzones of a Philadelphia crematorium that prosecutors say made Mastromarino's business so lucrative.

McCafferty also is expected to be a prosecution witness against the Garzones.

McCafferty, of Frankford, and the Garzones owned Liberty Cremation Inc. in Kensington. The Garzones also owned Garzone Funeral Home Inc., with branches in Kensington and Hunting Park.

The charges were related to a probe of interstate trafficking in human body parts that became public two years ago when seven New York morticians pleaded guilty to removing body parts from corpses for surgical use.

One of the cadavers was that of Alistair Cooke, the host of television's Masterpiece Theatre, who died in 2004 of cancer.