Harvard Medical School morgue director Cedric Lodge has been indicted for stealing and selling parts of human remains, such as heads, brains, skin and bones. It belongs to victims who volunteered to allow their dead bodies to be used for medical research and education.
The US judiciary announced, on Wednesday, that the director of the morgue of the prestigious Harvard Medical School, was arrested on charges of stealing organs and human remains from his workplace and selling them.
Gerard Karam, the federal prosecutor for the Central District of Pennsylvania, said that Cedric Lodge, 55, is accused of trafficking in stolen human remains. “Some crimes cannot be understood,” he said in a statement.
“It is particularly egregious that many of the victims here have volunteered to allow their bodies to be used to educate medical professionals and serve the interest of science and healing,” the attorney general stressed in his statement.
The morgue director, his wife Denise Lodge, 63, and five others have been indicted for conspiring as part of a “national network” to buy and sell human remains.
According to the indictment, between 2018 and 2022, Lodge “stealed organs and other parts of bodies that were donated for medical research and education, prior to their cremation.”
The indictment added that Lodge moved these remains from the morgue in Boston to his home in Gouvestown, New Hampshire, where he and his wife sold these remains to two other defendants, Katrina McClain and Joshua Taylor.
On occasion, the indictment said, Lodge allowed McClain and Taylor to enter the morgue and examine the bodies to choose which parts they wanted to purchase and then remove them. Many of the remains were shipped via the US Postal Service.
According to the Public Prosecution, McClain (44 years old) and Taylor (46 years old) resold these human remains for financial profit.
For its part, the Harvard Medical School announced that Lodge was fired on May 6, expressing its shock that such a thing “is very disturbing on our campus.”
