Mortuary manager sentenced for selling bodies donated to Harvard, including human faces

an ex Manager of Harvard Medical School morgue In boston Sentenced to eight years in prison for stealing and selling body parts “As if they were baubles.”

Cedric Lodge was at the center of a “sordid scheme” that was sending brains, skin, hands and faces to buyers. pennsylvania And after donating the dead bodies elsewhere Harvard Now they are no longer needed for research.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Alison Martin cited an “extremely horrific reality” where Lodge provided skin to be made into leather and bound into a book.

He added, “In another, Cedric and Dennis Lodge sell a man’s face – perhaps to put on a shelf, perhaps to be used for something even more disturbing.”

His wife, Denise Lodge, was jailed for just over a year for assisting him. Both appeared in federal court in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday.

Martin said Lodge, 58, of Goffstown, New Hampshire, “treated beloved human body parts as if they were baubles to be sold for profit” and collected thousands of dollars from 2018 to March 2020.

After Harvard finished using the donated bodies, usually returned to the family or cremated, Lodge, the mortuary manager for 28 years, admitted to removing parts.

His defense attorney, Patrick Casey, called Lodge’s actions “serious”, adding, “Mr. Lodge acknowledges the seriousness of his conduct and the harm his actions caused to both the deceased persons whose bodies They mercilessly humiliated them and their bereaved families.”

Harvard suspended body donations for five months in 2023 when the charges were filed.

At least six other people, including an Arkansas crematorium employee, have pleaded guilty in a body part trafficking investigation, prosecutors said.