But rather than receiving a dignified send-off, he ended up having his corpse carved up by modern-day bodysnatchers. Despite having a diseased heart and cancerous bones, a 'cutter' deboned his arms and legs, stripped the skin from his chest and back, and possibly removed the heart valves and veins, for sale to transplant companies.

Given that tissue and organs are not supposed to come from diseased or very old people, the paperwork that accompanied Cooke's body parts gave the cause of death as heart attack and took 10 years from his true age of 95. It also stated falsely that his daughter had given consent for him to be carved up.

It is still not known what happened to his body parts, and while Cooke was certainly the most well-known of the bodysnatching ring's victims, he was far from the only one in the multimillion-dollar scam.

A court heard that body parts from more than 1,000 corpses - many of them diseased - were illegally 'harvested', without proper medical screening and in frequently unsanitary conditions.

About 10,000 people received the parts, potentially exposing them to the risk of hepatitis, Aids and other infectious diseases.

Now the mastermind behind the ghoulish scheme has been told that he must spend 18 to 54 years in prison.

Michael Mastromarino, 44, a former oral surgeon who owned New Jersey-based Biomedical Tissue Services (BTS), pleaded guilty earlier this year to charges of enterprise corruption, body-stealing and reckless endangerment, and was sentenced on Friday.

Prosecutors say he was the brains behind the macabre plot hatched in 2001 when he was struck off for malpractice after developing a painkiller addiction.

And under the scheme which netted US$4.6 million (S$6.3 million), body parts were sold around the country for dental implants, knee and hip replacements and other procedures, with some even ending up in England.

And now some of the people who received parts supplied by BTS claim they were infected by the tainted tissue, including an Ohio mother of three who appeared in court on Friday to demand a harsh sentence for Mastromarino.

'Mr Mastromarino's sick, disgusting, appalling actions, all in the name of greed, have devastated my family to the point where we can never recover,' said Ms Danya Ryan, 44, who claims she contracted hepatitis during back surgery involving BTS bone.

Mastromarino told a Brooklyn judge in a soft voice that he was 'sorry for all the emotional pain' he had caused. He was then led to jail.

Three others who worked with him were also charged, as were funeral home directors in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Chris Aldorasi, who worked as a cutter for Mastromarino, was sentenced earlier this month to nine to 27 years in prison.

At a trial where he was found guilty of enterprise corruption and other criminal counts, Mr Cooke's daughter testified that she had never spoken to BTS about harvesting her father's body.

'Definitely not,' said Ms Susan Cooke Kittredge, 59, who lives in Vermont, when asked if she had given permission. 'My father would have been against that.'

Another cutter, Lee Cruceta, who pleaded guilty and testified against Aldorasi, is facing up to 20 years in prison. The fourth co-defendant's case is still pending.

AP, Reuters