Michel Mastromarino, body snatcher

It sounds like a gruesome science fiction novel: body parts from corpses transplanted allegedly without the knowledge of loved ones. Imagine, having surgery to get a new lease on life.

Instead you find out what you got was something stolen, something diseased — a ticking time bomb in your body.

“I had last rights. I mean, I almost bought the farm,” said Betty Pfaff, a local woman who had a tissue transplant. In July 2005, Pfaff was rushed to Abington Memorial Hospital with a temperature of 106. Her family was told she probably wouldn’t make it. “The doctors couldn’t figure out what the problem was,” Pfaff said. They said they didn’t know about a man named Michel Mastromarino, who some call Frankenstein, Cahn reported. Mastromarino was arrested and charged with heading a multimillion-dollar operation some say was a butcher ring right out of a horror movie. They didn’t know about the Philadelphia funeral homes, where investigators said diseased cadavers were left in alleys then stripped of bone, skin and tissue to be sold. They said they didn’t know that, during a standard hernia operation, Pfaff had an infected piece of donor skin grafted onto her body — skin that came from unsanitary corpses.” I was in intensive care 11 days. I was on a ventilator. I was on dialysis,” Pfaff said. “I lost a year of my life.” But Mastromarino’s attorney told NBC 10 that his client is not guilty, that he’s the victim of unscrupulous funeral directors like James McCafferty, Louis Garzone and his brother, Gerald, in Philadelphia. ” Innocent until proven guilty,” said Gerald Garzone’s attorney. A recent grand jury report says, “The Garzones and McCafferty were paid approximately $250,000 over an 18-month period for their participation in the criminal scheme to steal and sell body parts.”

Innocent until proven guilty or, as in this case until admitting guilt. I’m just hoping he doesn’t have an eBay account.