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A Horrible Crime
You know that classy fanfare of trumpets that raises the curtain on the award-winning television series Masterpiece Theatre? For more than 20 years it introduced Sir Alistair Cooke, the show's celebrated host. He was knighted for his distinguished career and dignified life. But the indignities suffered after his death in March 2004 sent shock waves around the world.
In a secret back room of a New York City funeral home, the remains of the revered 95-year-old commentator were dissected and his bones illegally removed in what may be described as the ghoulish workings of a human chop shop. Cooke's body was then cremated, so no one was the wiser until his daughter received a disturbing phone call late last year -- from detectives in the New York City Police Department's Major Case Squad telling her what they had discovered.
"I was literally struck dumb," explains Susan Cooke Kittredge, a minister who lives in East Montpelier, Vermont. "I was stunned for days. I couldn't process the information."
Investigators found that Alistair Cooke's body was one of more than 1,000 used in a macabre, multimillion-dollar illegal human bone- and tissue-harvesting scandal that's reverberated throughout the medical, regulatory and donor industries worldwide.
Bone and tissue had been removed from Cooke's body without the family's consent, then were shipped to companies that clean and prepare the material for use in surgical transplants. Investigators also found that medical forms identifying the body parts documented his age as 85 and cause of death as heart attack. But actually, he was 95 when he died of lung cancer, which, Kittredge says, metastasized to his bones.
And there's the real danger: While legal donations help many patients regain full, active lives, tissue illegally obtained can create health risks for unknowing recipients if disease or infection is not screened or disclosed.
"The body needs to be treated in a respectful way," Kittredge says. "And it is outrageous and terrifying that people who are so ill and need a transplant should be given potentially diseased tissue. It's appalling."
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