he sets out to do things to help people, and then his ambition gets the best of him, especially in this case, where he got so driven, that he believed he was smarter than everybody else. and that there were a lot of regulations and rules that were put into place that michael believed were unnecessary. did i take the best medical social history? no. was some of that paperwork forged? yes. now, did an hiv case come along? i don t know. but, i can tell you that in the sterilization process, the processing techniques that these companies use, it irradiates everything anyway. hepatitis, syphilis, hiv, and now this thing with cancer. well, the bone has cancer. the patient died of cancer, so
michael mastromarino had myself and every lawyer in my office completely convinced that everything he was doing was completely legal. now mind you, i don t always take what my clients tell me to be truthful. i went and did my own research and what we learned was that yes, what michael was doing was legal. i truly believed the brooklyn district attorney s office had no idea what was going on and we could march in there and explain to them that they have good intentions of protecting society, but they re wrong, that this is something that will better society. at one point, michael and his lawyer said that they were going to come in and speak with me, which as an investigative attorney, many people do. you want to hear what their story is. we sat down with what i
they were dissecting bodies and taking the bones and the tissue from the bodies. i didn t know what they were doing with them. i knew that they were giving them to processing companies for use in transplant, but i couldn t imagine whether or not this was something that could be done, couldn t be done. when i was first subpoenaed, was it a shock? yeah, i was absolutely concerned that i was being subpoenaed. that day, i called my lawyer. my name is mario gulucchi. i am a criminal defense attorney and i represented michael mastromarino in his criminal cases. he came into my office with a subpoena. i sat down and i read the subpoena. it was from the king s county or brooklyn, new york, district attorney s office. i didn t understand what they were looking for because i personally, i was never aware of the tissue harvesting business. so i said to michael, my initial reaction is what are you doing? you can do this? this sounds like something that s out of a frankenstein
and i was reading it, and it was just i couldn t even comprehend what i was reading. michael mastromarino. chris and lee and joseph were set to turn themselves in, the end of february of 2006. and they did. sure enough, they came in, they were arraigned in supreme court in brooklyn. they came in, there was cameras everywhere. there was family members who were irate. it was a very tense day, but it was also a good day from the point of view of saying we ve indicted them, now they re going to face charges. i turned myself in. i didn t get arrested, i turned myself in with my attorney 10:00 at night and walked into the d.a. s office in brooklyn and i stayed there overnight. and then, you know, they had the parade of me walking into court
my name is karen del rey, i live in hazlet, new jersey. my dad s name was james thornton sr. michael mastromarino called him bm04l125. what that code means is biomedical for bm, 04 the year my dad passed away, l for the 12th month of the year, and 125 125 is the 125th body they harvest that had month. he s ruined thousands of people s lives. he s ruined family members who are horrified and have nightmares to this day about what happened to their family members. it s difficult to get through every day. there s not a day that goes by that i don t think about him and what they did to him, and the hardest thing now is i can t get to any of the good memories.