Harvard Medical School morgue manager jailed for selling donor body parts online

Former Harvard Medical School morgue manager Cedric Lodge has been sentenced to eight years in prison for the black-market body part scheme. Photo / Steven Porter, Boston Globe via Getty Images

The manager of the Harvard Medical School morgue will spend nearly a decade in a United States prison for stealing and selling off cadaver parts that had been donated to the prestigious school for research.

Cedric Lodge, 58, was sentenced to eight years imprisonment in a Pennsylvania court on Tuesday, two years less than prosecutors requested for a crime they said “shocks the conscience”.

Between 2018 and 2020, Lodge reportedly removed organs, brains, skin, hands, faces, and dissected heads from the morgue, taking them back to his New Hampshire residence, according to the New York Times.

He and his wife, Denise Lodge, would ship the human remains to different locations across the country, making thousands of dollars in profit on the stolen remains.

Federal prosecutor Alisan Martin said the couple treated “beloved human beings as if they were baubles to be sold for profit”, hawking the body parts to buyers with seemingly macabre intentions.

“In another, Cedric and Denise Lodge sold a man’s face – perhaps to be kept on a shelf, perhaps to be used for something even more disturbing.”

Denise Lodge was sentenced to one year in prison for her part in the enterprise.

According to the New York Times, sentencing documents said the daughter of a donor whose remains may have been sold in the scheme felt the “corruption transcends the bodily level and extends into the realm of memory”.

She said it would be “a long time” until she could “not have thoughts like, did he still have his head? Did they sell his herculean right hand? Were the skin of his tattoos made into cushions?”

A Harvard Medical School statement previously described Lodge’s conduct as “abhorrent and inconsistent with the standards and values that Harvard, our anatomical donors, and their loved ones expect and deserve”.

Twelve lawsuits have been filed against the school by the family members of the anatomical donors, Al Jazeera reported, with a Massachusetts court ruling Harvard was legally liable for the black-market operation.

Chief Justice Scott L. Kafker determined the families could sue the university, which held a “legal obligation to provide for the dignified treatment and disposal of the donated human remains”.