Investigation Discovery-Bizarre Crime of the Week

Austin Police Seek Help in Broad Daylight Sexual Assault

There seems to be no end to sexually-related crimes in the U.S.  An example is the alleged robbery and sexual assault of a young woman in broad daylight in the 1000 block of Clayton Lane, a bustling northeast Austin, Texas neighborhood street, two weeks ago.  Four black males are believed to have been involved in the bizarre crime.

The victim, 20-years-old, told Detective John Sevier of the Austin Police Department's sex crimes unit, that she had been driving near Cameron Road and U.S. Highway 290, minding her own business when, shortly past 9:00 a.m. on Thursday, May 1, 2008, a brown coupe with four men inside drove alongside her and demanded that she pull to the side of the road.  One of the men was brandishing a black gun.  Fearing that she would be shot if she didn't comply, the young woman stopped along Clayton Lane.  Despite the busy activity along the street, the man who held the gun got inside her car and beat her.  He also robbed her, and sexually assaulted her.  He didn't stop the sexual assault until the victim began to scream, at which time he left the scene with the other men.  Distraught and beside herself with fear and anxiety, the victim drove away and was soon involved in a minor accident with another vehicle about a half-mile away from the scene of the attack as she frantically searched for a pay phone so that she could call her boyfriend.

Sevier described the young woman as a "victim of opportunity," and said in a public announcement that the only lead the police have is...

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No Respect for the Dead-or the Living

A bizarre and shameful case involving an illegal body-parts sales scheme that has been making headlines for the past couple of years has made its way back into the courtroom more than once this year, the latest having been during the last week in April when a class action lawsuit representing hundreds of people who are alleging that their family members' body parts were taken and sold for medical use without their permission was filed in a proceeding that has also become a criminal case for several of those named in the suit.  Families involved in the class action suit have claimed that the bodies of more than 1,000 people had been dismembered and that their bones, skin, heart valves, tendons, and other tissue had been sold to hospitals by the funeral homes representing the deceased and their grieving relatives via Biomedical Tissue Services, a business located in Fort Lee, New Jersey.  It was also alleged that the body parts in question had been harvested and sold under unsanitary conditions and that patients on the receiving end ran the risk of becoming infected.  The suit, filed in a Philadelphia court, charged that the funeral homes, their directors, and others involved in the scheme had played a role in a conspiracy that had ultimately inflicted intentional emotional distress upon the relatives and reaped millions for the perpetrators.  The case was the same one that involved Masterpiece Theatre host Alistair Cooke, whose body parts were sold for medical transplants following his death in March 2004.

Named in the lawsuit are Michael Mastromarino, Christopher Aldorasi, Lee Cruceta, Kevin Vickers, Gerald Garzone, Louis Garzone (Gerald Garzone's brother), and James McCafferty.  The lawsuit alleges that the aforementioned individuals made $3.8 million by selling body parts that they obtained in Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey.  There were 1,007 bodies, to be precise, from which body parts were harvested and sold between February 2004 and September 2005.  According to a grand jury report, the scheme was "ghoulish, greedy, dangerous and criminal."

According to the New York Times, Michael Mastromarino, 44, a dentist from New Jersey who had lost his license to practice, was the owner of the biomedical supply house and ran the corrupt multi-million dollar illegal enterprise that sold the pillaged body parts through his business.  Mastromarino pled guilty to being the ringleader of the operation on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 in a Brooklyn court.

"Not only did he cut corners, but he cut limbs and legs and arms," said Assistant District Attorney Josh Hansheft.  "He mutilated bodies for his profit and greed….We all respect the dead; in this case, nobody respected the dead."

Mastromarino and his cohorts were referred to as "modern-day body snatchers" in news media reports.

Among the charges that the contemporary grave robber pleaded guilty to were several counts of enterprise corruption, reckless endangerment and body stealing in exchange for 18 to 54 years in prison.  He could have faced considerably more prison time had he chose to have gone to trial and been convicted on all of the counts of which he had been charged.  His actual sentence will be determined on May 21, 2008.

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Photo Credit: Police Mugshot

Torturing and Robbing Drug Dealers-Dominican Republic Style

Now here's something you don't read about every day:  A sadistic group of eight men from the Dominican Republic were charged Tuesday, May 6, 2008 in a Brooklyn, New York federal court with conspiracy to commit robbery, drug dealing, and a number of other crimes stemming from offenses that began occurring in the spring of 2003 that targeted major drug traffickers in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Florida.  The gang of eight from the Dominican Republic impersonated police officers in a complex scheme that involved the abduction and torture of several high-profile cocaine traffickers that forced the drug movers to turn over millions of dollars' worth of their illegal stashes to the fake cops over the past several years.

According to the real police and the unsealed federal indictment, the police impersonators committed 100 holdups of the drug traffickers in the aforementioned states, and injured as many people as there were holdups while committing the drug heists.  The gang was "particularly sophisticated" in its tactics, and often kept the drug traffickers under close surveillance for several weeks before making their move in "police-style" car stops using handguns and vehicles outfitted with police lights and sirens.  Sometimes the gang would burst into the dealers' homes after identifying themselves as law enforcement officers, and would hold the traffickers and their families hostage for several days--until they got what they were after.  It wasn't unusual for the gang to handcuff its victims, or bind them with duct tape, after which they would conduct acts of torture while interrogating their captives.  According to the indictment, sometimes the gang would simulate "drowning through repeated submerging of victims' heads in water for extended periods of time," and in at least one instance that occurred in 2005, a victim reported that two of the gang members "applied a pair of pliers to the victim's testicles and threatened to squeeze the pliers if the victim did not talk."

U.S. Attorney Benton Campbell said that the Dominicans' scheme "was breathtaking in...

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