Free Republic

Case reveals workings of body-snatching ring that earned almost $5 million by plundering corpsesTHE daughter of Alistair Cooke called for the world to focus on the sale of body parts yesterday after the undertaker who cremated the legendary Letter from America broadcaster pleaded guilty to a ghoulish scheme to harvest his corpse. Susan Cooke Kittredge told The Times that the revelations about her father — whose arms and legs were stolen after his death for use in surgery — lifted the lid on an issue of global concern. “It’s a conversation we are going to have to have as human...

Alistair Cooke: Revered in life but deserted in death By Adam Goldman Associated Press NEW YORK - After Alistair Cooke’s death in the early morning of March 30, 2004, he was wheeled out of his Upper East Side apartment on a collapsible gurney and whisked away into the darkness. Three days later, Cooke returned home in a small, cardboard box. Susan Cooke Kittredge examined the ashes of her father, the refined and legendary host of "Masterpiece Theatre" on PBS and longtime BBC correspondent. Something was odd, she thought. A minister, she had handled ashes in the past; usually there were...

When it comes to the body, they say you can't take it with you when you die. But they didn't say it should be sold from the back of a truck. Or that you should not have the right to give a fully informed consent for whatever it is that medical science wants to do with your remains. Recently it was revealed that a group of criminals was stealing bones from bodies at crematoriums in New York. They were then sold to for-profit tissue banks in New Jersey and Florida. Among the victims was the late host of PBS television's...

Michael Bruno's life had been uncomplicated: He was an immigrant who worked hard, spoke his mind and succumbed to kidney cancer two years ago at 75. "Typical Italian cab driver," recalled his son, Vito. "He had an opinion about everything." It's only after death that his story became ghoulish. Authorities believe his body and those of hundreds of other people — including famed British broadcaster Alistair Cooke — were secretly carved up in the back rooms of several funeral parlors citywide to remove human bone, skin and tendons without required permission from their families. Authorities allege the body parts were...

Relatives of Alistair Cooke, the late broadcaster, have spoken of their revulsion after it was found that his bones were cut from his body by a criminal gang and sold for transplant tissue. New York police said his body was one of dozens chopped up for profit by rogue morticians in Brooklyn. After presenting BBC radio's Letter from America for more than half a century, Cooke died in March last year of lung cancer, aged 95. The "body-snatchers", as the New York tabloids call them, surgically carved out his bones the day after he died, said the Daily News. His...

A fiendish team of body snatchers in Brooklyn defiled the body of beloved "Masterpiece Theater" host Alistair Cooke, removing his bones for profit without his family's permission.......the body of the avuncular TV icon, who died in March 2004 at 95, was cremated at New York Mortuary in Spanish Harlem — but not before a pair of heartless harvesters got their hands on him. Cooke, who hosted the PBS anthology series of British programs from 1971 to 1993, was among dozens of victims whose bodies were sawed up and peddled by funeral director Joseph Nicelli and disgraced dentist Michael Mastromarino, cops...

WASHINGTON — "In rhetoric, however," I lazily wrote, "parrhesia has a specialized meaning." In zinged a mock-irate letter from Alistair Cooke, founder of what he called Sanpickle, "Safire Nit Pickers' League." Did I write this unnecessary ize, he demanded, on personalized notepaper, to be read by customized shirts? "Your little flourish of bloviation provoked spasms of sarcasm, like, `I suppose if he got in trouble in England he'd go looking for a Specialized Constable, i.e., a constable appointed for specialized occasions.' " Then there was the time I wrote "our mutual fascination," an error that drew Cooke's "You mean `our...

EDITOR'S NOTE: Alistair Cooke, the British broadcaster, died this morning, at age 95. Just last month, he retired his "Letter from America," the world's longest running radio program. Clive Davis wrote on NRO on the passing of the "Letter from America" era earlier this month, it is reprinted below. Ambassadors come and go, but Alistair Cooke somehow seemed a permanent symbol of the Anglo-American partnership. Hence the genuine shock and dismay that greeted the news that, at the age of 95, the BBC's man in Manhattan filed his last "Letter From America" Although the BBC hierarchy often had mixed feelings...

(1010 WINS) (NEW YORK) (London) -- Alistair Cooke, the broadcaster who epitomized highbrow television as host of ``Masterpiece Theater'' and whose ``Letter from America'' was a radio fixture in Britain for 58 years, has died. He was 95. The B-B-C says Cooke died at his home in New York at midnight. No cause of death was given, but Cooke had retired earlier this month because of heart disease. Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed sadness at the veteran broadcaster's death, saying he was one of the greatest broadcasters of all time. ``Letter from America,'' which was carried on the BBC World...

Veteran broadcaster Alistair Cooke has died at the age of 95, the BBC said on Tuesday. For more than 50 years Cooke entertained radio listeners with his weekly Letter from America. In 1973 he received an honorary knighthood for his contribution to Anglo-American understanding. This month Cooke, who had joined the BBC in 1934, announced his retirement after 58 years presenting Letter from America. Cooke joined the BBC as a film critic before starting up US current affairs and historical programme Letter From America in 1946. The show is the world's longest-running speech radio programme. It was announceed this month...

Veteran Radio 4 broadcaster Alistair Cooke is retiring after 58 years at the helm of his show Letter From America. The 95-year-old joined the BBC in 1934 as a film critic before starting up US current affairs and historical programme Letter From America in 1946. The show is the world's longest-running speech radio programme. Cooke, who was absent from the show last week due to illness, will not record any new shows but Radio 4 will air archive shows for several weeks. The BBC said Cooke had decided to sign off following advice from doctors Cooke said: "I can no...

I take, I have to take, a nap in the late afternoon in order to be alive and agreeable in the evening. For the past week or longer I've not napped, I've lain there - it's called resting I believe, but my mind turning over many things. "fretting" I think is the right word. "It's the war," said my helpmeet with the wagging finger. She was right. It was time to do something about it. I let myself think the unthinkable and realised that my trouble was anxiety and you don't need a Freudian analyst to tell you that anxiety...

... The point I want to make for critics, listeners young and old, in Hong Kong or John o'Groats is that this talk is being recorded at 9.30 in our morning, on Friday 21 March. By the time you hear it - whether on Friday evening, or Sunday or Tuesday evening in New Zealand - anything might have happened. Iraqi border guards may have surrendered in droves, or not. Hundreds of Scud missiles might have whizzed toward Kuwait or Tel Aviv. Saddam himself, pray the lord, might have suddenly flown the coop and gone into safe exile - on the...

... One of the most attractive and leafy parts of Washington is called Georgetown and is the site of an elegant Georgian mansion called Dumbarton House. It was here that Dolly Madison, the president's wife, fled for safety and stayed while the British were burning the White House in the war of 1812. Remember? But this elegant mansion called Dumbarton House is not the birthplace of the United Nations but the place where it was conceived. I mentioned a week or more ago that my latest bed book was one I read when it first came out in 1972, only...

Getting into bed the other night, licking my lips at the prospect of a new bed book, once I hefted it aboard I couldn't help sighing with the thought that I have chronically weak wrists - because all my bed books seem to run to 800 pages and weigh about five pounds. That's because they are memoirs or autobiographies and more often than not the only book the author ever wrote or will write. My present sweetmeat is by the late Sir Alexander Cadogan who was for most of his heyday the permanent under secretary of the Foreign Office during...