The former morgue manager at Harvard Medical School was among five people indicted by a grand jury over allegations they stole and sold body parts from cadavers donated to the school, federal prosecutors said.
Cedric Lodge, 55, who was fired from his job on May 6, and the other defendants were accused of carrying out a black market body parts scheme from roughly 2018 to 2022, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania said in a statement on Wednesday.
Prosecutors said Lodge, who was hired by Harvard in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1995, would at times let potential buyers into the school’s morgue to examine cadavers and select what parts to buy. The buyers mostly resold the body parts, prosecutors said.
Lodge would also sometimes take body parts – which included heads, brains, skin and bones – back to his home where he lived with his wife, Denise, 63, and some remains were sent to buyers through the mail, authorities said.
Bodies donated to Harvard Medical School are used for education, teaching or research purposes. Once they are no longer needed, the cadavers are usually cremated and the ashes are returned to the donor’s family or buried in a cemetery.
A sixth person was previously charged in Arkansas in the same investigation on suspicion of stealing body parts from a mortuary she worked for, prosecutors said.
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