‘As if they were baubles’: Harvard morgue manager and his wife ran a secret side business, and what they were doing is horrifying

Cedric Lodge, a former morgue manager at Harvard Medical School, was sentenced to eight years in federal prison. He ran a scheme where he stole and sold body parts from donated cadavers. Lodge worked at the morgue for 28 years before authorities caught him stealing brains, hands, skin, and faces from bodies that families had donated for medical research.

According to AP News, the body parts were shipped to buyers in Pennsylvania and other states. Lodge took the parts after the cadavers were no longer needed for teaching purposes. He made thousands of dollars from this operation, which ran from 2018 to March 2020.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Alisan Martin called it a “ghoulish scheme” in court documents. She described how Lodge provided human skin to one buyer so it could be tanned into leather and bound into a book. Martin said this was a “deeply horrifying reality.”

Lodge treated donated bodies like products for sale

In another case, Lodge and his wife Denise, sold a man’s entire face to a buyer. Martin suggested the face might have been kept on a shelf or used for something even worse. The couple appeared in federal court in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday for sentencing.

Denise Lodge helped her husband with the scheme and received just over a year in prison. She assisted him in coordinating sales and shipping the stolen body parts to buyers across state lines. Lodge had earlier entered a guilty plea to charges related to the smuggling operation.

At least six other people have pleaded guilty in connection with the body parts trafficking investigation. This includes an employee from an Arkansas crematorium, showing how widespread the illegal network was.

When families donate bodies to Harvard, they expect the institution to handle them with respect. The bodies are typically returned to families or cremated after being used for teaching. Lodge violated this trust by removing body parts before cremation took place. The scandal has added to Harvard’s recent controversies, which have been facing the prestigious institution.

Lodge’s defense attorney, Patrick Casey, called his client’s actions “egregious” in court filings. “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,” she added. Harvard suspended body donations for five months in 2023 after charges were filed.