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 They were rebuked Wednesday by a judge, who said their regrets weren't grounds for them to renege on an agreement reached weeks ago.
The judge's order means Michael Mastromarino, 44, will go to prison for 18 to 54 years for his ghoulish crimes
-- possibly putting him behind bars for the rest of his life.
"Mr. Mastromarino may never see the light of day," said Brooklyn Judge Albert Tomei, whose words brought Mastromarino's mother to tears.
Prosecutor Monique Ferrell said there had been a "change in circumstance" and a trial was needed to reveal the full "scope of harm he caused." She said prosecutors became fully aware of his activities only in the last year.
In a statement e-mailed after the hearing, a spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney's office provided a clearer explanation of why prosecutors sought a trial.
"With the abundance of evidence and the number of victims that were violated, and with their families expressing their preference for a trial, we thought justice and the public would be better served if we went to trial," the statement said.
Mastromarino's lawyer, Mario Galluci, called the prosecution's arguments for withdrawing the plea agreement "ridiculous."
The judge called the prosecution's reasons "specious" and said they had "no substance."
"I'm not here to have show trials," Tomei said.
There will be at least one trial, however. Chris Aldorasi, who was implicated in cutting up the bodies but has denied wrongdoing, has refused to plead guilty and take any offer that includes time behind bars.
Aldorasi will face trial beginning Monday, when Mastromarino is to enter his plea.
Mastromarino and Aldorasi, both in court Wednesday, face charges of enterprise corruption, body stealing, opening graves, unlawful dissection and forgery.
Also charged in the scheme, which Mastromarino is accused of masterminding, were a Brooklyn mortician named Joseph Nicelli and another cutter, Lee Cruceta.
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 Cruceta has pleaded guilty and will testify against Aldorasi. Mastromarino will not testify against Aldorasi, his lawyer said.
Nicelli, who suffered a head injury, has been removed from the case until he recovers. He has been granted a separate trial.
Mastromarino's plea will bring at least part of the scandal to an end.
The story broke two years ago while Mastromarino was the owner of Biomedical Tissue Services. He was accused of furtively hacking up corpses, including that of "Masterpiece Theatre" host Alistair Cooke, obtained from funeral homes in the Northeast. The body parts were sent to the processors, who paid thousands of dollars for them and have denied any wrongdoing in the case.
BTS shipped the bone, skin and tendons to Regeneration Technologies Inc., LifeCell Corp. and Tutogen Medical Inc., all publicly traded companies, and to two nonprofits, Lost Mountain Tissue Bank and the Blood and Tissue Center of Central Texas. (Regeneration recently acquired Tutogen; its new name is RTI Biologics Inc.)
Those companies face about 900 civil lawsuits from people who received the tissue in transplants and from the families of loved ones who had their body parts taken without permission.
Mastromarino has already cooperated with prosecutors, and once he pleads guilty he could be deposed in the civil cases. Larry Cohan, a Philadelphia lawyer who is part of a team representing more than 800 people in those lawsuits, said he would seek to depose Mastromarino.
A federal judge "has ordered limited discovery on what the processors knew or should have known about Mastromarino's conduct," Cohan said. "His testimony will be directly related to that discovery. And we will seek to obtain it as soon as possible."
[Associated
Press; By ADAM GOLDMAN]
Copyright 2008 The Associated
Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
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