A former manager of the Harvard Medical School morgue has been sentenced to eight years in prison for stealing and selling body parts ‘as if they were baubles.’
Federal authorities have said Cedric Lodge, 58, was at the center of a ghoulish scheme in which he shipped brains, skin, hands and faces to buyers in multiple states after cadavers donated to Harvard were no longer needed for research.
His wife, Denise Lodge, 65, was also sentenced to just over a year in prison for assisting him.
The couple had previously pleaded guilty to charges related to the interstate transportation of stolen goods, with Cedric admitting he stole body parts from cadavers donated to Harvard Medical School’s Anatomical Gift Program and sold them to buyers across the country.
Among the many gory body parts Cedric removed from the cadavers between 2018 and March 2020 were organs, brains, skin, hands, faces and dissected heads.
In one example, Cedric Lodge provided skin to a buyer so it could be tanned into leather and bound into a book, a ‘deeply horrifying reality,’ Assistant US Attorney Alisan Martin said in a court filing.
‘In another, Cedric and Denise Lodge sold a man’s face – perhaps to be kept on a shelf, perhaps to be used for something even more disturbing,’ Martin said.
She said Lodge, of Goffstown, New Hampshire, treated the parts of ‘beloved human beings as if they were baubles to be sold for profit,’ collecting thousands of dollars in profit along the way.
Cedric Lodge, 58, has been sentenced to eight years behind bars for stealing body parts from the Harvard Medical School morgue
His wife, Denise, 65, was sentenced to one year behind bars for assisting him. She is pictured in 2023
The couple would find potential buyers through websites like Facebook, and some would even come to collect the parts in person, according to court documents obtained by The New York Times.
Other times, payments were arranged through a PayPal account registered to Denise, the Boston Globe reports. Many of these payments sported macabre descriptions – such as ‘head number 7’ or in one case, ‘braiiiiiins.’
Authorities said she assisted in the scheme by communicating with buyers, accepting the payments and shipping the stolen remains.
By 2013, feds said Cedric was stealing supplies like body bags, citing a post to the online forum DeviantArt from the morgue man – who, by 2018, had allegedly upgraded to the corpses.
‘I have been looking for customers interested in purchasing some heavy body bags and other miscellaneous medical toys,’ Lodge wrote in a post resurfaced by prosecutors, looking for ‘a little cash to plan a vacation.’
In just May 2018, prosecutors said, she shipped 24 hands, two feet, a partial skull and two skull caps to one buyer, who paid $3,050.
Between February and March 2019, she also shipped two heads for $1,725 and five faces tot he same buyer for $2,300, according to the sentencing memo.
In total, the couple is said to have made between $40,000 to $95,000 from the sales.
But once the university was done with the cadavers, the bodies were supposed to be either cremated or returned to their families according to donor agreements.
In total, the couple is said to have made between $40,000 to $95,000 from the sales of stolen body parts
Among the items they shipped throughout the country was a partial skull
The couple would find potential buyers through websites like Facebook, and some would even come to collect the parts in person
The daughter of one man whose body was donated said in the sentencing document that ‘this corruption transcends the bodily level and extends into the realm of memory.
‘It will likely be a long time, if ever,’ she wrote, until she could look at a photo of her father ‘and not have thoughts like “Did he still have his head? Did they sell his herculean right hand? Were the skin of his tattoos made into cushions?”
‘Whether the answer is “yes” or “no” is not the issue so much as the families have had to go to that space with the real anxiety and pain such gruesome questions inflict.’
Lodge, who ran the morgue for 28 years before he was fired in 2023, expressed regret in court, with defense attorney Patrick Casey acknowledging that his acts were ‘egregious.’
‘Mr. Lodge acknowledges the seriousness of his conduct and the harm his actions have inflicted on both the deceased persons whose bodies he callously degraded and their grieving families,’ the attorney said in a court filing.
Lodge’s scheme unraveled when Pennsylvanian Jeremy Pauley’s estranged wife told East Pennsboro Township police that he was hoarding illegally obtained human remains
At first, Pauley – who had black, scale-like tattoos covering half of his face and metal spikes protruding out of the top of his head – told authorities he was a preservation specialist, specifically of ‘retired medical specimens’ and historic human remains
Lodge’s scheme was finally uncovered when Pennsylvanian Jeremy Pauley’s estranged wife told East Pennsboro Township police that he was hoarding illegally obtained human remains.
At first, Pauley – who had black, scale-like tattoos covering half of his face and metal spikes protruding out of the top of his head – told Sergeant Adam Shope he was a preservation specialist, specifically of ‘retired medical specimens’ and historic human remains.
A professional with a website and years of experience, he answered questions about the collection without any pushback – and left Shope in awe due to the extent of his cooperation.
He explained how his home doubled as his Memento Mori Museum, ‘a place where lost histories are regained and respectfully displayed.’
But when the estranged wife called authorities again the following month, urging officers to check Pauley’s basement and look inside multiple Home Depot buckets, Shope obtained a search warrant.
There, officers recalled in an ensuing criminal complaint, a plastic bag filled with human eyeballs sat the floor, as an expanse of human skin laid draped over the back of a chair.
Inside the three buckets Pauley’s wife has warned about, laid a bevy of floating body parts – including kidneys, lungs, a heart, a spleen, and a trachea.
There were also two brains, as well as a skull with hair still attached, and a child-sized jawbone with teeth still in place.
Pauley was then charged with trafficking stolen human remains – including skulls, hearts, skin and stillborn babies
Pauly allegedly purchased $4,000 worth of human remains from Candace Scott, who police say stole them from a mortuary partnered with the University of Arkansas
A federal investigation ensued, during which officials would eventually honed in on Lodge and several other buyers.
Harvard suspended the donation of bodies for five months in 2023 when charges were filed.
University officials then sent letters in June and July of that year to the next of kin of nearly 400 donors who may have been the subject of Lodge’s scheme.
Families that entrusted their loved ones’ remains to Harvard have since filed about a dozen lawsuits against the school following the arrest of Lodge and others charged in the scandal, accusing it of mishandling the bodies.
But a Massachusetts judge dismissed those cases last year, saying the lawsuits failed to plausibly allege Harvard failed to act in good faith in handling the bodies or was legally responsible for Lodge’s ‘horrifying’ conduct.
Prosecutors said at least six other people, including an employee at an Arkansas crematorium, have pleaded guilty in the investigation of body-parts trafficking.
Daytime view of the Harvard Medical School quadrangle. In the basement, sits the halls of windowless, subterranean space Lodge manned for some 27 years
Katrina Maclean, 46, of Massachusetts, became the most recent to plead guilty to one count of interstate transportation of stolen goods earlier this month.
Prosecutors have said Cedric sold her body parts, including skin that she planned to have tanned into leather and bound into a book.
Maclean’s lawyer had previously tried to get the charges against her dismissed, arguing that as the owner of Kat’s Creepy Creations, she was part of a ‘legal, nationwide oddities community that collects body parts.’
During the investigation, authorities also learned of an apprentice mortician in Arkansas, Candace Chapman Scott, who stole human remains from the mortuary where she worked and sold them. She was sentenced to 15 years behind bars in January.
Following the Lodges’ sentencing on Wednesday, Harvard Medical School said the former morgue manager’s actions were ‘abhorrent and inconsistent with the standards and values that Harvard, our anatomical donors and their loved ones expect and deserve.
‘While Lodge’s sentencing concludes the criminal case against him, the process of healing from the pain he caused continues,’ university officials said.
‘Our Anatomical Gift Program relies on the deep, selfless commitment of individual donors and their families to provide essential educational opportunities to medical students, surgeons, pharmacists and many allied professionals.
‘We reaffirm our deep sorrow for the families of donors who may have been impacted.’