TRUE CRIME: Where's Tombstone Tully

Last Wednesday, Michael Mastromarino and Joseph Nicelli were indicted on dozens of felony counts, charged with allegedly harvesting bones and other tissues from corpses for sale on the open market without the families’ consent. 

Also indicted were Lee Crucetta and Chris Aldorasi, who are accused of being the “cutters” who did the actual slicing and dicing, replacing bones with PVC pipes, broomsticks, and other ad hoc hardware. Mastromarino ran Biomedical Tissue Services, a body part clearinghouse based in Fort Lee, N.J., and Nicelli operated area funeral homes.

Harvesting body parts for medical purposes is nothing new—as a business, it’s been around since the 15th century. Now-adays the demand for transplant organs has transformed it into a multi-billion dollar industry, and the black market in body parts remains a dirty secret which has infiltrated every facet of the death industry—from hospitals to university research facilities to funeral parlors. Even the use of PVC pipes and other materials has long been a normal part of embalming. Mastromarino and Nicelli stepped over the line not in altering death certificates and forging signatures of family members, but in selling diseased tissue to hospitals around the country.

When the indictments came down last week, one name was prominent in its absence: Mastromarino and Nicelli’s business partner, Det. Joseph Tully.

Along with being an NYPD detective, Tully also operated two funeral homes and worked as a security guard at the Bronx medical examiner’s office, earning him the nickname “Tombstone” among his co-workers. 

In October, 2005, the Post described Tully’s role in the body parts scandal and that, as a result of the story, the NYPD had launched an internal investigation into Tully’s involvement. In November, he was named in the first two lawsuits filed by distraught family members. 

After that, however, the name Tombstone Tully has effectively been excised from the story. Not only was he not indicted with the others, there’s not been a single further mention of his name as the case developed. It was as if he had never played a role—or never even existed.

This first struck me as odd a few weeks prior to the indictments, when I received a note from a woman in Texas. Her mother, she said, had received a transplant with tissues obtained from Mastromarino’s company, so she was understandably concerned. In her own research into the case, however, she was unable to find any further information about Det. Joseph Tully. Since I had written on the scandal, she asked if I could tell her more about him. 

I became curious and started doing some poking around on my own. When his name was not included in the indictments, something smelled funny. (I always get suspicious when I find my own articles are the only available reference.)

Now, if—    if—the NYPD’s internal investigation cleared Tully of any connection with Mastromarino and Ni-celli, why wasn’t that reported? Likewise, if the Post’s exposé was the result of some misguided and mighty faulty reporting, why wasn’t that reported—even if only in the form of a little crowing on the part of the Daily News (where the story was broken originally)?

It’s Journalism 101. Det. Tully was, for a few months at least, one of the three central players involved in what has become the biggest story of the year so far. His name was all over the papers. Even if he had been cleared of any wrongdoing, there should be a mention of that in the recap accompanying any ongoing story—especially as the indictments come down. Something along the lines of “Det. Joseph ‘Tombstone’ Tully has since been cleared.” Or maybe, “Det. Joseph ‘Tombstone’ Tully has agreed to turn state’s evidence and testify against” etc.

So what happened? Shoddy journalism? That’s certainly possible. Yet another NYPD cover-up? Or something even more sinister? Maybe it’s yet more evidence of our accelerated collective short-term memory loss—which in this case has affected not only the general public, but apparently journalists investigators at the Brooklyn DA’s office as well. Could everyone have forgotten a figure like “Tombstone Tully”? 

All I know is that the disappearance of Det. Joseph Tully has become one of the most curious elements of a case which, in Alice’s words, becomes curioser and curioser by the day.