I've been thinking about Pete Kent a lot lately. It's not just because three years ago this week, somebody kidnapped the beloved Mayor of Seventh Street, slashed his throat, cut open his chest, ripped out his heart, liver, kidney and part of his esophagus and dumped his eviscerated corpse under a pile of trash in an abandoned North Philly row house.

Nor is it entirely because the cops—despite doggedly pursuing never-in-Philly angles like heart-eating rituals—don't seem to be any closer to bringing one of the city's most savage murderers to justice.

For Petey Pete's Sake: The family Kent left behind. : Michael T. Regan

The gruesome details are hard to repress this time of year, because it's when I check in on Pete's ex-wife, daughter and four grandchildren. But what's really got Petey Pete popping up in my head like a restless ghost on Cold Case is less what happened to him, and more what's happened to us, as a people, since February 2003.

I'm just not sure Kent's death would raise a hair on our collective neck today, for the sanctity of the corpse no longer exists. What else can be said after the term "human chop shop" surfaces not in a Stephen King novel, but in an investigation about which a Food and Drug Administration spokesman named Stephen King is issuing comments.

In October, the New York Daily News first reported that a funeral parlor in Brooklyn allegedly allowed a dentist, one who'd lost his license after being found with a hypodermic needle jammed in his arm on the clock, to strip bodies clean of tissues, skin and bones. This, without either documentation that the deceased wanted to be a donor or the family's knowledge.

One postmortem victim was a 43-year-old woman who, prior to succumbing to ovarian cancer, said she didn't want anybody touching her body after she'd died and asked to be cremated immediately. Another was an 82-year-old woman whose legs, when exhumed, were actually plastic plumbing pipes.

The root of the scheme, of course, was money. In an increasingly sick world, it seems people parts produce profits. As the story progressed, investigators realized there may be many, many more victims than just the dead who'd been carved up and the families who felt violated. The bone, tissue and skin were then sent out across the country to people in need of transplants and grafts. Including to Shore Memorial Hospital, located just across the bay from Ocean City.

Because these parts weren't properly screened for disease, the FDA, on Oct. 14, 2005, issued a "Recall of Human Tissue Products" edict. It came too late, however, for hundreds of people who are roaming the Philly area, and the country, unsure whether a procedure designed to help them might have spiked their bloodstream with HIV or other infectious diseases of which the FDA warned. That the chances of infection from the tainted parts is considered low doesn't make things any better for the victims, or our society as a whole.

The fact that necrophiliacs have long stalked the earth is pretty bad, make that skeevy, in and of itself. But the illicit harvesting of body parts is one of the things we hoped it'd never come to. Well, it has.

Luckily, the scandal hasn't hampered the local Gift of Life donor program's ability to legally procure, and find matches for, much-needed organs for transplants. What it has done, however, is amplify just how ferocious Kent's murder was.

When the dead described in this story, which is gradually gaining national traction, were defiled, they felt no pain. Kent, a harmless guy known to sweep the North Philly streets, upon which he'd dance after downing a beer or two, didn't have that luxury.

When his body was discovered three weeks after friends last saw him hop on the Route 47 bus, Police Homicide Capt. Charles Bloom asked what then seemed like an outrageous question:

"Is there a market for this?"

That's finally been answered.

Though a police spokesman couldn't offer an update in time for this column—Kent's family tells me they haven't heard a peep in ages, and that they hadn't heard about the Brooklyn case—I can't shake this sneaking suspicion that Kent's murder was a harbinger. That there was no blood at the scene indicates he was methodically, albeit crudely, dissected elsewhere. Plus, he'd mentioned that he'd recently made a "doctor friend in Jersey" before his death. These facts mean something altogether new in light of what's going on. When his organs were harvested sometime in the month of February three years ago, it was unthinkable that someone would have any sort of outlet for the parts—be it the black market or voodoo. Not now.

So maybe, amid all this gore, Kent's family will finally get some answers, and Petey Pete can finally get some rest.