The Brothers Grimm From Philadelphia

Two brothers who ran a funeral home and crematorium admitted Tuesday that they sold corpses to a company that trafficked stolen body parts, a macabre scheme that left families aghast and unclear about the fate of their loved ones, according to an Associated Press article published by CNN.

Louis and Gerald Garzone allowed at least 244 corpses to be carved up without families' permission and without medical tests, prosecutors said. Skin, bones, tendons and other parts -- some of them diseased -- were then sold around the country for dental implants, knee and hip replacements, and other procedures.

Some bodies were only torsos by the time the hacking was done, said Assistant District Attorney Evangelia Manos.

The mastermind of the scheme, Michael Mastromarino, of New Jersey-based Biomedical Tissue Services, took bodies from funeral homes in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Among the corpses plundered was that of "Masterpiece Theatre" host Alistair Cooke.

In Philadelphia, he paid the Garzones and their partner, James McCafferty, more than $245,000 for at least 244 cadavers between February 2004 and October 2005, prosecutors said.

The tissue plundered from a single body often fetched about $4,000, and Mastromarino made millions from the scheme, prosecutors said.