Alistair Cooke: His body parts sold in ugly scheme
Ten days before Christmas, I received a call from a detective with the Brooklyn district attorney's office. He wondered if I had heard anything about the office's investigation into the illegal sale of more than 1,000 bodies by several funeral homes in the area. I told him I had not. He went on to explain that the bodies were stolen and parts of them sold to several different processing plants. It sounded macabre, and I don't really remember much more after he said, "We have evidence that your father's body was one of the ones taken."
I was literally dumbstruck, too stunned to think or speak. The detective asked if by any chance this was the Alistair Cooke. I told him yes; he whistled through his teeth. Apparently investigators found that those who sold his tissue had falsified my father's age and cause of death, listing him as 85 rather than 95 and as having died of a heart attack rather than lung cancer that had metastasized to his bones. CNN had reported on the case the night before, but at that time no one knew of my father's involvement. Civil suits were being filed; class-action suits would probably follow.
I hung up and stared, slack-jawed, into space. Searching for some equilibrium in the next few days, I researched the story and felt the hair on the back of my neck rise. I called the detective and asked if there might be some mistake. He said that was not possible; they had receipts for my father's bones from tissue-processing plants in New Jersey and Florida.
The Brooklyn district attorney's office set about the long, gruesome task of verifying the contents of coffins. Unfortunately, they found a lot of plumber's pipe where there should have been bone. Last month, four men, including an embalmer and the owner of a human tissue bank, were arrested. Other arrests are expected.
Read entire article at Susan Cooke Kittredge
I was literally dumbstruck, too stunned to think or speak. The detective asked if by any chance this was the Alistair Cooke. I told him yes; he whistled through his teeth. Apparently investigators found that those who sold his tissue had falsified my father's age and cause of death, listing him as 85 rather than 95 and as having died of a heart attack rather than lung cancer that had metastasized to his bones. CNN had reported on the case the night before, but at that time no one knew of my father's involvement. Civil suits were being filed; class-action suits would probably follow.
I hung up and stared, slack-jawed, into space. Searching for some equilibrium in the next few days, I researched the story and felt the hair on the back of my neck rise. I called the detective and asked if there might be some mistake. He said that was not possible; they had receipts for my father's bones from tissue-processing plants in New Jersey and Florida.
The Brooklyn district attorney's office set about the long, gruesome task of verifying the contents of coffins. Unfortunately, they found a lot of plumber's pipe where there should have been bone. Last month, four men, including an embalmer and the owner of a human tissue bank, were arrested. Other arrests are expected.