A former Harvard Medical School morgue manager accused of stealing and selling human organs and other parts of cadavers donated to the school for medical research and education has agreed to plead guilty.
Cedric Lodge, 57, of Goffstown, New Hampshire, was indicted in June 2023 and accused of stealing and selling heads, brains, skin and bones from cadavers that were donated to the university as part of a “nationwide network” between 2018 and 2023, prosecutors said.
Lodge and his wife, Denise, allegedly sold the body parts to buyers in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts and shipped them via the postal service to clients who, in one instance, intended to tan skin into leather.
Denise Lodge (left in black)
Cedric Lodge, who managed Harvard’s morgue for more than two decades before his 2023 arrest, has agreed to plead guilty to transporting stolen goods across state lines, which carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine, according to a plea agreement filed on Wednesday, April 16, in federal court in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
Remaining charges of conspiracy and transport of stolen goods are due to be dropped.
A hearing on his plea change has not been scheduled, although his trial was initially scheduled for May.
The expected plea change comes almost a year after Denise Lodge, 64, who was accused of shipping stolen human body parts to buyers, pleaded guilty on the count of aiding and abetting interstate transport of stolen goods in April last year.
Lodge worked at Harvard University for approximately 28 years before being fired in May 2023.
As well as taking body parts to his home, Lodge had also allowed potential buyers into the school’s morgue to hand-pick what human remains they wanted, prosecutors said.
The cadavers are intended for educational, teaching, or research purposes and are donated to the medical school through the Anatomical Gifts Program.
Alongside the Lodges, four other defendants were indicted by a federal grand jury in Pennsylvania on charges of conspiracy and interstate transport of stolen goods.
One of those charged was Katrina Maclean, 44, from Salem, Massachusetts, who owns a store called Kat’s Creepy Creations in Peabody.
According to court documents, Maclean shipped human skin she purchased from Lodge to another defendant and “engaged his services to tan the skin to create leather.”
Another facing federal charges is Joshua Taylor of West Lawn Berks County. He sent Denise Lodge $1,000 via PayPal with a memo that read “head number 7,” prosecutors said. Another $200 transaction from Taylor to Lodge allegedly read “braiiiiiins.”
After the allegations emerged, family members who donated their loved ones’ bodies to medical research spoke of their horror and shared concerns about what may have happened to their remains.
“We were just disgusted,” Paula Peltonovich, whose father’s remains were donated to the school, told the Boston Globe in June 2023. “Sick, like we were going to throw up.”
Sarah Hill, whose aunt Christine Eppich had her remains gifted via the Anatomical Gifts Program, also told Boston 25 News that she felt “sick” over the ordeal in June 2023.