61 lines
5 KiB
Markdown
61 lines
5 KiB
Markdown
---
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aliases:
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- BTS
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- Biomedical Tissue Services, Ltd.
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- BioMedical Tissue Services
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category: "Private Organization"
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tags:
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- Organization
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- BiomedicalTissueServices
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- BodyPartsTrade
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- FortLee
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- RCHorsch
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summary: "Fort Lee, New Jersey, tissue-recovery company run by Michael Mastromarino that took tissue from more than a thousand corpses without consent and sold it to processors, until closed by the FDA in 2006."
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start: 2002
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end: 2006
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location: "Fort Lee, New Jersey"
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relations:
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- type: contractor_to
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with: "[[Regeneration Technologies]]"
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role: "tissue supplier"
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fn: 3
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- type: contractor_to
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with: "[[LifeCell]]"
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role: "tissue supplier"
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fn: 3
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- type: contractor_to
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with: "[[Tutogen Medical]]"
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role: "tissue supplier"
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fn: 3
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- type: contractor_to
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with: "[[Lost Mountain Tissue Bank]]"
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role: "tissue supplier"
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fn: 3
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- type: investigated
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with: "[[Food and Drug Administration]]"
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reverse: true
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start: 2005
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fn: 3
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created: 2026-09-23
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updated: 2026-09-23
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---
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Biomedical Tissue Services, Ltd. (BTS) was a tissue-recovery company licensed in [[New Jersey]] and based in [[Fort Lee, New Jersey|Fort Lee]], with offices in [[Brooklyn]] and a satellite office in [[Brighton, New York|Brighton]], near [[Rochester, New York|Rochester]]. It was founded in 2002 by [[Michael Mastromarino]], a former oral surgeon, to sell "human tissue from cadavers to tissue banks around the country." From 2001 to 2005, by Mastromarino's admission, it took bone, skin, tendon and other tissue from the bodies of people who had not consented, using forged consent forms and falsified records of age and cause of death. The processors that bought its tissue recalled it in September and October 2005, and the [[Food and Drug Administration]] ordered the company to cease manufacturing in early 2006.[^1][^2][^3][^4]
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### Operations
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BTS paid funeral directors about 1,000 dollars a body. In Brooklyn it worked from a room in the Daniel George & Son funeral home, owned by Mastromarino's partner [[Joseph Nicelli]]; in [[Manhattan]], among other places, through the New York Mortuary at 2242 First Avenue; and in [[Philadelphia]], from 2004, through the [[Garzone Funeral Home|Liberty Crematorium]] of [[Louis Garzone|Louis]] and [[Gerald Garzone]] and James McCafferty, which supplied at least 244 bodies. Before the Philadelphia arrangement, cutters had to rebuild the bodies with PVC pipe to hide the removals from families at funerals.[^1][^2] The *New York Daily News* reporter William Sherman said that the tissue went to "just about every state, including Alaska," to five Canadian provinces, and to England, Ireland and other European countries.[^5] Its Rochester office paid funeral homes the same standard fee; in 2006 the [[Monroe County, New York|Monroe County]] District Attorney, Michael Green, indicted four BTS employees, Darlene Deats, Kevin Vickers, Nicholas Sloyer and Kirssy Knapp, and three funeral directors, Jason Gano, Scott Batjer and Serrell Gayton, over 36 bodies taken in 2005.[^6]
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### Recall
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According to the [[Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]], the tissue went directly to five processors, [[Regeneration Technologies]], [[LifeCell]], [[Tutogen Medical]], the Central Texas Regional Blood and Tissue Center, and the [[Lost Mountain Tissue Bank]], which recalled it in September and October 2005. The CDC dated the FDA's order to BTS to cease manufacturing and to retain all its tissue products to January 2006; the FDA's own statement, reported on February 6, 2006, described the order as issued that day.[^3][^7] About 10,000 people received tissue supplied by BTS, and the processors faced hundreds of civil suits from recipients.[^4]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Commonwealth v. Mastromarino, 2 A.3d 581, 2010 PA Super 128 (Pa. Super. Ct., filed July 21, 2010), opinion of Stevens, J. https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=1483314488518887260
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[^2]: Office of the District Attorney, Kings County. "Kings County District Attorney Charles J. Hynes, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly and Department of Investigation Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn Announce Indictment in Tissue Theft," media release, February 23, 2006. https://www.nyc.gov/assets/doi/downloads/pdf/pr_tissueharvesting022306.pdf
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[^3]: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Investigation into Recalled Human Tissue for Transplantation, United States, 2005-2006," *Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report* 55, no. 20 (2006), p. 564.
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[^4]: Goldman, Adam. "Body-parts big pleads guilty," *Philadelphia Daily News,* March 19, 2008. https://www.inquirer.com/philly/hp/news_update/20080319_Body-parts_big_pleads_guilty.html
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[^5]: "Four Named in New York 'Body-Snatcher' Crimes," *Day to Day,* NPR, February 23, 2006 (William Sherman of the *New York Daily News* interviewed by Madeleine Brand). https://www.npr.org/transcripts/5230097
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[^6]: "7 charged with stealing body parts from corpses," *NBC News,* 2006. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/7-charged-stealing-body-parts-corpses-flna1c9473448
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[^7]: [FDA statement on Biomedical Tissue Services], *Infection Control Today,* February 6, 2006.
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