The former Harvard Medical School morgue manager was one of five people indicted by a grand jury on charges that they stole and sold body parts from cadavers donated to the school, federal prosecutors said.
Cedric Lodge, 55, who was fired on May 6, and the other defendants were charged with running a black market body parts scheme from about 2018 to 2022, the U.S. Attorney General for the Middle District of Pennsylvania said in a statement. statement on Wednesday.
Prosecutors said Lodge, who was hired by Harvard in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1995, would sometimes allow potential buyers into the school’s morgue to examine cadavers and select which parts to purchase. The buyers largely resold the body parts, prosecutors said.
Lodge also sometimes took body parts — including heads, brains, skin and bones — back to his home where he lived with his wife, Denise, 63, and some of the remains were mailed to buyers, authorities said.
Bodies donated to Harvard Medical School are used for teaching, teaching or research purposes. Once no longer needed, the cadavers are usually cremated and the ashes returned to the donor’s family or buried in a cemetery.
A sixth person was charged earlier in the same Arkansas investigation on suspicion of stealing body parts from a morgue she worked for, prosecutors said.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether Lodge, who was arrested by the FBI on Wednesday, according to ABC News citing the FBI, whether the other defendants, including Lodge’s wife, had legal representation.
The FBI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The indictment charges the Lodges and three others — Katrina Maclean, 44, of Salem, Massachusetts; Joshua Taylor, 46, of West Lawn, Pennsylvania; and Mathew Lampi, 52, of East Bethel, Minnesota — with conspiracy and interstate transportation of stolen goods.
Prosecutors say the defendants were part of a nationwide network of people who bought and sold stolen remains from the school and a morgue in Arkansas.
The Lodges reportedly sold remains to Maclean, Taylor and others in arrangements made over phone calls and social media websites.
Taylor sometimes transported stolen remains back to Pennsylvania, authorities said, while other times the Lodges sent remains to him and others. Maclean and Taylor resold the stolen remains for profit, authorities said.
Denise Lodge first appeared in federal court in Concord, New Hampshire, on Wednesday and was released on bail by personal admission, WMUR-TV reported. She declined to comment as she left court.
Cedric Lodge was due to appear in court for the first time later Wednesday.
Two other people have previously been charged in the case.
“Some crimes defy comprehension,” US attorney Gerard Karam said in a statement.
“The theft and trafficking of human remains touches the very essence of what makes us human,” Karam said.
People whose body parts were sold had volunteered their remains to be used to train medical professionals, he said, adding that Harvard Medical School was cooperating with the investigation.
George Daley, the dean of Harvard Medical School, said in a statement to the school community on Wednesday that “we are shocked to learn that something so disturbing could happen on our campus.”
Daley said Harvard Medical School, which first learned of the allegations in March, was searching its records, particularly logs that showed when the donor’s remains were sent to be cremated and when Lodge was on campus. was to try to determine which body parts of the donors may have been cremated. traded.
Harvard’s media relations office said it could not provide more information, citing the criminal investigation.