For downtown arts groups struggling with the void left by the 9/11 attacks, a 2002 "blueprint for renewal" seemed full of promise. Drafted by the agency in charge of rebuilding in Lower Manhattan, it pledged to develop "a critical mass of dynamic, enticing and diverse cultural venues" there.

The agency, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, also promised to help cultural institutions in the area - and those that might be thinking of relocating downtown - to find the sites and the money they would need to expand or move.

Three years later, the development corporation has accomplished practically none of the above. The number of cultural groups, including libraries, below Canal Street now, according to the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, a nonprofit advocacy organization, has plummeted to 112, from 200 before 9/11. The $45 million that the development corporation set aside last May for cultural groups that are not part of the master plan at ground zero has yet to be distributed.

Tom Healy, the president of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, expressed frustration over the delay. "Nothing has happened," he said. "There is no plan. There is no group that's been chosen to help them give that out yet. And it would make a huge difference now, that kind of money."

Given the gradual evaporation of planned cultural organizations at the ground zero site itself, many downtown arts groups are pessimistic.

The Freedom Center was dropped from the site last month by Gov. George E. Pataki in response to objections from the families of some 9/11 victims who wanted a strictly patriotic memorial focus; the Drawing Center, which had sought to relocate from SoHo, was forced out for similar reasons. Both had been chosen in June 2004 to share a museum building designed by the Norwegian firm Snohetta.

"We're all pretty upset about it," said Holly Block, the executive director of Art in General, an alternative art space on Walker Street. "It's very problematic that it's been politicized."

Contributing to the bleak picture, a performing arts center that was to be designed for the ground zero site by Frank Gehry and shared by the Joyce Theater, which presents dance, and the Signature Theater, an Off Broadway company, is on the back burner. And Anita Contini, the point person for culture on the development corporation, resigned from that post in July and is unlikely to be replaced.

While many arts groups have stuck it out downtown and several are trying to upgrade their operations, all say they could use more help. Three-Legged Dog, a media and theater group, has been struggling since Tower 7 fell on its headquarters at 30 West Broadway. The company cut its staff from 27 to 2, suspended salaries for nine months and stopped production for a year and a half.

The group decided that the route to survival was building a new home. It has managed to raise $3 million toward a $4.6 million arts complex, now under construction at 80 Greenwich Street. But there is still $1.6 million to go.

Three-Legged Dog said it had asked the development corporation for help but never heard back. "We've had a request to them for about three years now," said Kevin Cunningham, the company's executive artistic director.

Members of Dance New Amsterdam, a nonprofit dance service organization, say they asked the development corporation for $1 million two years ago but also never received any response. "I think everyone is so discouraged about L.M.D.C.," said Charles D. Wright, the group's executive director. Still, the dance group managed to raise $4.5 million over the last few years for a new 25,000-square-foot space, now under construction at 280 Broadway in the Sun building. Such arts groups have managed to endure mostly through contributions from various foundations, individuals and local downtown groups, like the cultural council, which was given $5 million from the Sept. 11 Fund to distribute in the first three years after 9/11. "With the cultural plan stalled at ground zero, it's all the more important that the rest of what goes on culturally gets supported," Mr. Healy said.

The development corporation has been noticeably absent from this effort, arts groups say. "They've said all along that they are going to be helping people in the neighborhood," said Mr. Cunningham of 3-Legged Dog.

Investigators are pursuing a criminal inquiry involving macabre dealings in mortuaries and unseemly sales of flesh and bone.

Investors in a Brooklyn funeral home have told the police that they suspect an embalmer improperly removed body parts. The embalmer had connections to a dentist whose business, Biomedical Tissue Services of Fort Lee, N.J., sold human tissue to processing companies, a legitimate but poorly understood niche of medical science. The police quietly pursued the investigation for more than a year until it was disclosed in newspapers this month.

Now investigators are following an abundance of leads from people identifying themselves as relatives of victims, a law enforcement official said, adding that no charges had been filed and no grand jury convened. The federal Food and Drug Administration has warned the public that Biomedical Tissue Services may have obtained tissue without getting proper consent from donors or screening the tissue for disease, and that some of that tissue may have been implanted in patients. Law enforcement officials spoke on condition of anonymity because there have been no charges and the investigation is unfinished.

The notion of a clandestine human chop shop has attracted some of the familiar characters of New York scandal. Sanford Rubenstein, the lawyer best known for representing the Rev. Al Sharpton and Abner Louima, went before five television cameras to announce a civil lawsuit on behalf of a man who said that tissue had been taken from his father's body. Mr. Rubenstein said that he was also taking calls from other people who were making similar claims.

The case's origins trace to a complicated disagreement over the sale of a funeral home in Brooklyn.

A couple operating the funeral home approached the police and prosecutors more than a year ago with accusations of fraud, an investigator and the law enforcement official said. An offhand remark developed into an accusation that the embalmer was returning bodies with parts missing, and the embalmer's business connections to the dentist led to questions about the possibility of sales of improperly obtained tissue.

Since the investigation was disclosed in The Daily News on Oct. 7, its twists and turns have given tabloid editors occasion to design headlines with the words "ghouls," "ghoulish" and "harvest" and the phrase "Body-Snatch Probe Widens."

Tales of stolen body parts are timelessly resonant, tied to the sanctity of dying and fear of the unknown. The 1978 movie "Coma," directed by Michael Crichton, told a fictional story of doctors stealing organs from patients. For years, the State Department has sought to dispel rumors of an international trade in baby organs, distributing materials that quote the French folklorist Veronique Campion-Vincent: "The baby-parts story is a new - updated and technologized - version of an immemorial fable."

Two central themes of the New York story have drawn scrutiny in recent years. In 2002, oversight of the funeral industry was much discussed after the discovery of 280 bodies dumped in the woods near a Georgia crematory. And last year, the underground market for body parts was underscored by a scandal at the University of California, Los Angeles, where an employee was accused of conspiring to sell body parts.

Experts say the nature of these fears is evolving as advances in technology make more parts of the body useful and consequently valuable. An area of medical science once mostly limited to whole vital organs like hearts, livers and kidneys has expanded to include muscle, bone, tendon and skin used in therapies and research.

And an aging population with the resources to pay for health care options has increased demand, said Doug Wilson, vice president of LifeNet, a nonprofit organ donation and tissue banking system in Virginia Beach, Va.

"This story has been written with different players - the names are now changed - over the last 10 years," Mr. Wilson said. "There's more use of tissue today because orthopedic and neurosurgery are increasing because baby boomers are getting older. They want to remain active and golf and play tennis and jog five miles and keep their cholesterol levels down."

As the industry has grown, the possibility of infection from diseased tissue has become a concern. A galvanizing case was the death in 2001 of Brian Lykins, 23, who received tainted tissue during knee surgery in Minnesota. In May, the Food and Drug Administration enacted safety standards for tissue processors, governing labeling, packaging and distribution.

That agency is one of several investigating the New York case. Law enforcement officials and representatives of people involved in the inquiry say the case can be traced to the sale of the Daniel George & Son Funeral Home in Bensonhurst. Records in Kings County Supreme Court show that Daniel George Jr. signed an agreement in March 2002 to sell the home to Joseph Nicelli of Staten Island.