The manager of the morgue at Harvard Medical School, Cedric Lodge, 55, has been accused of stealing organs and body parts from cadavers between 2018 and 2022 and selling them online with his wife Denise Lodge, 63.
According to the federal complaint, Cedric Lodge is said to have taken “heads, brains, skin, bones and other human remains,” and took them from the morgue in Massachusetts to his home in New Hampshire. He is also said to have allowed two other people named in the indictment, Katrina Maclean, 44, the owner of Kat’s Creepy Creations, a store in Peabody, Massachusetts, and Joshua Taylor, 46, to enter the morgue and choose what to take.
Maclean is claimed to have purchased two dissected faces for $600 and shipped human skin to another defendant in Pennsylvania to tan the skin to create leather. Taylor is believed to have sent over $37,000 to Denise Lodge for body parts stolen by her husband.
US Attorney for Pennsylvania, Gerard Karam, expressed his shock and utter dismay at the crime and said, “The theft and trafficking of human remains strikes at the very essence of what makes us human. For them and their families to be taken advantage of in the name of profit is appalling, and with these charges, we are seeking to secure some measure of justice for all these victims.”
Harvard Medical School deans George Daley and Edward Hundert called the actions “morally reprehensible,” and the school has created a webpage for donor families in light of the news. The maximum sentence for the charges is 15 years in prison.
Denise and Cedric Lodge both made initial court appearances on Wednesday in federal court in Concord, New Hampshire and were each released on personal recognizance bail. They declined to comment as they left the courthouse.