Worse, health officials fear some of the body parts were diseased, and could infect patients who received them in skin grafts, dental implants, or other orthopedic procedures -- a risk concealed by paperwork doctored with forged signatures and false information.
''It's not just disrespectful to my father," said Vito Bruno, who has sued one of the funeral homes. ''It's an absolutely hideous crime against other people."
In the Cooke case, authorities confirmed this week that investigators contacted the late broadcaster's family after finding paperwork indicating his bones had been removed and sold by Biomedical Tissue Services, a tissue bank in Fort Lee, N.J., before he was cremated. Cooke, who had been host of the PBS program ''Masterpiece Theatre," died from cancer last year at 95 in Manhattan.
Relatives insist they never agreed to the procedure, and that someone had falsified documents by changing his cause of death to heart attack, and by lowering his age to 85. Harvesting bones from cancer patients violates rules by the Food and Drug Administration.
A daughter, Susan Cooke Kittredge, said relatives were ''shocked and saddened" by the news. ''That people in need would have received his body parts, considering his age and the fact he was ill when he died, is appalling to the family. . . . His remains were violated," she said.
The probe, first reported by the New York Daily News in October, has uncovered other gruesome images. In one instance, the corpse of a Queens grandmother that investigators exhumed last month had nearly all the bones removed below the waist and replaced with PVC pipes.
A state grand jury in Brooklyn has been hearing evidence against at least a half-dozen funeral homes and against Biomedical Tissue Services. Authorities allege that they illegally profited by conspiring to sell stolen body parts, and say indictments could be issued early next year.
