--- category: Authors & Journalists created: 2026-09-23 died: 2004-03-30 location: New York City relations: - fn: 6 role: father type: relative_of with: '[[Susan Cooke Kittredge]]' summary: British broadcaster whose bones were cut from his body before his cremation in 2004 and sold by Michael Mastromarino's Biomedical Tissue Services to two tissue processors. tags: - Person - Broadcaster - Journalist - BodyPartsTrade - BiomedicalTissueServices updated: 2026-09-23 --- Alistair Cooke (died March 30, 2004) was a British broadcaster, journalist and actor, host of the PBS series *Masterpiece Theatre*. He died at 95 of lung cancer that had spread to his bones. Before his body was cremated, bones were removed from it without his family's knowledge by the tissue-recovery company of [Michael Mastromarino](/people/michael-mastromarino/), [Biomedical Tissue Services](/organizations/biomedical-tissue-services/), and sold for more than 7,000 dollars to [Regeneration Technologies](/organizations/regeneration-technologies/) and [Tutogen Medical](/organizations/tutogen-medical/).[^1][^2] ### The Theft His daughter, Susan Cooke Kittredge, chose a funeral home with a 595 dollar cremation fee, the New York Mortuary Service in East Harlem, according to the writer Kerry Howley; the home promised her a box of ashes, and for a fee gave a [New Jersey](/places/new-jersey/) tissue-procurement agency access to the body, whose bones were cut out at the hip, and three days later she received the ashes by mail.[^3] The Kings County District Attorney's release of February 2006 identified the funeral homes involved in the scheme as Daniel George & Sons in Brooklyn and New York Mortuary at 2242 First Avenue in Manhattan, and recorded that "a 95-year-old cancer victim was listed as a healthy 85-year-old who died of heart failure."[^4] According to sources quoted by the *New York Daily News,* Mastromarino changed Cooke's age from 95 to 85 and his cause of death to a heart attack in the paperwork given to the two processors. Cancer that had spread to the bones is an automatic disqualification for tissue donation, the *Daily News* reporter William Sherman said.[^1][^5] "I hope those guys burn in hell for what they did," the family's attorney, David Grossberg, told the *Daily News*.[^1] Kittredge, a minister in East Montpelier, Vermont, said she learned of the theft from a message left by the Brooklyn District Attorney's office about ten days before Christmas 2005. "I did think that my father had been cremated, and I still don't know that he wasn't," she said. "I just don't know how much of him was cremated."[^6] In October 2006 seven New York funeral directors linked to the scheme pleaded guilty, among them, according to defense attorneys, the director of the funeral home that took parts from Cooke's body.[^7] [^1]: "TV host Alistair Cooke's bones allegedly stolen," *NBC News* (msnbc.com, from the *New York Daily News*), December 22, 2005. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna10574333 [^2]: Shapiro, Joseph. "Mastermind Of 'Body Stealing' Scheme Dies," *NPR,* July 2013. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/07/09/200481947/mastermind-of-body-stealing-scheme-dies [^3]: Howley, Kerry. "Who Owns Your Body Parts?" *Reason,* March 2007. https://reason.com/2007/02/07/who-owns-your-body-parts/ [^4]: Office of the District Attorney, Kings County. "Kings County District Attorney Charles J. Hynes, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly and Department of Investigation Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn Announce Indictment in Tissue Theft," media release, February 23, 2006. https://www.nyc.gov/assets/doi/downloads/pdf/pr_tissueharvesting022306.pdf [^5]: "Four Named in New York 'Body-Snatcher' Crimes," *Day to Day,* NPR, February 23, 2006 (William Sherman of the *New York Daily News* interviewed by Madeleine Brand). https://www.npr.org/transcripts/5230097 [^6]: "Personal Story of the Brooklyn Tissue Theft Case," *Talk of the Nation,* NPR, March 6, 2006 (Susan Cooke Kittredge interviewed by Neal Conan). https://www.npr.org/transcripts/5247635 [^7]: "7 charged with stealing body parts from corpses," *NBC News,* 2006. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/7-charged-stealing-body-parts-corpses-flna1c9473448