Gerald Garzone

Gerald Garzone is a Philadelphia funeral director who, with his brother Louis Garzone and James McCafferty, owned the Liberty Crematorium in Kensington and supplied at least 244 bodies to Michael Mastromarino's Biomedical Tissue Services between early 2004 and September 2005 for more than 245,000 dollars. He pleaded guilty on September 2, 2008, and was sentenced to 8 to 20 years; his appeal of an order to pay the salaries of his prosecutors produced the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's decision in Commonwealth v. Garzone (2012).¹² The history of the business is set out under Garzone Funeral Home.

Plea and Sentence

Gerald Garzone pleaded guilty to corrupt organizations, criminal conspiracy, theft by unlawful taking for the theft of body parts, abuse of corpse, recklessly endangering another person, and fraudulently obtaining public assistance, the last for false claims to the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare for funerals of the indigent already paid for by families, on which he received 51,750 dollars. Under his agreement the Commonwealth dropped the remaining charges; his share of the restitution was 144,000 dollars, and there was no agreement as to sentence. "Yes, sir," he answered at the colloquy.¹ At the sentencing hearing in October 2008 the court imposed 8 to 20 years on each brother and joint restitution of over 300,000 dollars.²

Costs Appeal

On a post-sentence motion by the Commonwealth, the trial judge, who remarked, "I had been doing this for 27 years. I never saw anybody ask for cost of prosecution on guilty plea," ordered Gerald Garzone to pay 90,028 dollars, comprising 84,723 dollars for the salaries of the assistant district attorneys and county detectives assigned to the case and 5,305 dollars in grand jury costs. On April 13, 2010, the Superior Court vacated the salary portion and affirmed the rest: "although the crimes in this case are particularly heinous, if the General Assembly intended to permit such recovery of regularly paid salaries of assistant district attorneys and detectives to be costs associated with the prosecution, the Legislature would have expressly done so."¹² The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, in an opinion by Chief Justice Ronald Castille, affirmed on January 19, 2012, holding that the Philadelphia costs-of-prosecution statute did not authorize the assessment.²

In 2026 Gerald Garzone told The Philadelphia Inquirer that he had never heard of R.C. Horsch, who was reported to have paid a crematorium employee for access to the dead.³