Body snatcher who stole bones of broadcaster Alistair Cooke and 1,000 other victims jailed for 27 years

A member of a body-snatching gang, which stole the bones of veteran broadcaster Alistair Cooke and more than 1,000 other victims, was jailed for up to 27 years last night.

Christopher Aldorasi, 36, and gang members made more than £2m by taking bone and tissue from the dead.

Body parts were sold to medical companies for use in transplants and other medical procedures.

The grim trade saw Mr Cooke's body parts sold for £5,500.

The scheme's ringleader, Michael Mastromarino, 44, pleaded guilty earlier this year to body harvesting.

He admitted to the the 'systematic harvesting of tissues without consent' from 'several hundred others, some of these names including Alistair Cooke'.

Lawyers believe around 40 unsuspecting British patients received the bone graft material stolen by 44-year-old former dentist Mastronmarino.

He had a team of more than 12 body cutters, including Aldorasi.

Mastronmarino forged documents, never obtained any consent from any relatives, and never inquired if the victims had any infectious diseases as he tried to cover his tracks.

Macbre: Alistair Cooke's bones were stolen by a body snatching gang

Aldorasis role in the gang led him to be convicted in New York of 20 crimes, including enterprise corruption, grand larceny and reckless endangerment.

The body-snatching ring ran for more than four years, ending in the autumn of 2005, with more than 1,400 corpses were illegally harvested.

The bodies came from funeral homes in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Biomedical Tissue Services, which was owned by Mastromarino, shipped the body parts to Regeneration Technologies, LifeCell Corp, Tutogen Medical Inc and two non-profit organisations, Lost Mountain Tissue Bank and Tissue Centre of Central Texas.

The court heard there were 900 civil lawsuits filed against Mastromarino.

Some of the material taken illegally from mortuaries in the US was implanted into British patients who underwent orthopaedic surgery in the UK, medical regulators found.

Alistair Cooke - best know for his long-running Letter from America - died aged 95 in 2004.

As part of the plea bargain, Mastromarino co-operated with prosecutors in a probe of several companies which bought the stolen body parts and then sold them to more than 20,000 transplant recipients throughout the US, Canada and Europe.

The transplants included bones, skin, arterial valves, ligaments and tendons.