Body Parts

The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Penn's medical school yesterday suspended two employees who are suspected of supplying body parts to a Center City doctor for shipment out of state for use in research and teaching. The hospital also said its medical board was in the process of informing the doctor, Martin Spector, that it was suspending his affiliation with the hospital "pending further review. " Spector, 70, an ear, nose and throat specialist, has had admitting privileges at the hospital for decades, according to Dr. Laurence Earley, associate dean of Penn's medical school.

Dr. Martin Spector was fined $35,200 yesterday and sentenced to perform 1,600 hours of community service for the city's Prison Health Services for selling stolen human body parts to research institutions. "People donate their bodies to science for specific purposes and feel they are making an informed decision," said Common Pleas Court Judge Mark I. Bernstein, who imposed the sentence. "Dr. Spector has trampled on the rights of people who were doing a humane service for the good of science.

WASHINGTON - The Dover military mortuary entrusted with the solemn duty of receiving and caring for America's war dead twice lost body parts of remains shipped home from Afghanistan, the Air Force revealed Tuesday. Three mortuary supervisors have been punished, but no one was fired in a grisly case reminiscent of the scandalous mishandling and misidentifying of remains at Arlington National Cemetery. The Air Force, which runs the mortuary at Dover, Del., acknowledged failures while insisting it made the right decision in not informing families linked to the missing body parts until last weekend - months after it completed a probe of 14 sets of allegations lodged by three members of the mortuary staff.

A plastic bag of body parts washed up on a beach in Long Branch yesterday, forcing it to close along with two other Monmouth County beaches littered with floating timber. Steve Madonna, New Jersey's new environmental prosecutor, was among state officials inspecting the timbers and other debris shortly after 11 a.m. when a bag lodged in the debris accidentally was punctured and an arm popped out, said Ann Crawford, spokeswoman for the attorney general. The bag contained two arms and hands, two legs and feet, and a head.

For decades, brothers Louis and Gerald Garzone, the owners of a local funeral home used by families for generations because they were the local funeral home, were fixtures in Kensington. Today, the men are to go on trial in a Philadelphia courtroom, accused of betraying those who entrusted their loved ones to them. If the charges against the brothers are true, the Garzones - without permission and for $1,000 a corpse - allowed the remains of 244 Philadelphians to be cut up and sold for parts used in surgery implants.

Workers who handle corpses in several medical schools and hospitals in the city were interviewed yesterday by police who are widening the investigation into the possible shipment of body parts to out-of-state research centers and medical schools by Dr. Martin Spector. Police yesterday also interviewed several additional current or former employees of Spector, who has offices at 22d and Locust Streets and at 647 E. Allegheny Ave. On Monday, the University of Pennsylvania indefinitely suspended two dieners - employees who clean bodies after they are dissected and studied - as police questioned them about their possible role in providing Spector with heads and other body parts.

Dr. Martin Spector, the Center City eye, ear, nose and throat specialist charged two years ago with selling stolen human heads to research institutions, said yesterday that he sold the heads in the interest of medical research. "I only did this to help humanity. This was only a tiny part of my work," said Spector, 72. "My people tell me we were losing money. " In addition to shipping heads to a research institution in Colorado, Spector said he also sold heads and other body parts to Yale University and to New York University.

Photocopies of a 12-year-old girl's nude body parts are pornography, a Montgomery County judge has ruled, clearing the way for prosecutors to try Graterford inmate Dante Dozier next week on charges of felony possession of child pornography. "It makes me happy. I think it is the correct decision," Assistant District Attorney Douglas T. Gould said yesterday of Judge William Vogel's decision. Dozier persuaded a girl in Coronado, Calif., who had become his pen pal through a teen magazine, to send him explicit photocopies of her and a young female friend's genitalia, breasts and buttocks.

When village chief Moshade Raphalalane first confronted Ernest Mabuda about rumors that he had killed his son, Mabuda was outraged. "He is my child," said Mabuda, 27. "It's not your business. Get out. " Then, strangely, Mabuda instructed his wife to turn over a handbag to the village chief. Raphalalane looked in. The bag contained the torso of 21-month-old Theophillus Mabuda. The toddler's severed head, arms, legs and genitals were found in Mabuda's hut, neatly packaged separately, in plastic shopping bags.

When Darlene Krzywicki's doctor told her there was a recall related to her spinal surgery, she thought he was talking about the metal rod and screws that had been inserted. She said she didn't even know that bone and marrow from a cadaver had been used in her operation, let alone that the body parts had been illegally harvested and had not been screened for infectious diseases. But the worst news was still to come. Krzywicki, a mother of two from Northeast Philadelphia, had contracted hepatitis C from the cadaver parts.