Former Harvard morgue manager sentenced for selling body parts

A former morgue manager at Harvard Medical School was sentenced Tuesday to eight years in prison for stealing and selling body parts donated for scientific research, the Justice Department said.

Cedric Lodge, 58, pleaded guilty in May to trafficking the stolen remains, which include internal organs, brains, skin, hands, faces and dissected heads, from 2018 through at least March 2020.

He was fired from the university in May 2023, Harvard has said.

Investigators said Lodge and his wife, Denise, took body parts from the school near Boston to their home in Goffstown, New Hampshire, as well as locations in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania “without the knowledge or permission of his employer, the donor, or the donor’s family” before shipping them to buyers in other states.

Denise Lodge, 65, was sentenced to one year in prison, the Justice Department said in a statement. She pleaded guilty in April 2024.

“Today’s sentencing is another step forward in ensuring those who orchestrated and executed this heinous crime are brought to justice,” said Wayne A. Jacobs, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Philadelphia field office.

Christopher Nielsen, the Inspector in Charge of the Philadelphia Division of the Postal Inspection Service said, “The trafficking of stolen human remains through the US Mail is a disturbing act that victimizes already grieving families while also creating a potentially hazardous situation for Postal employees and customers. I hope our efforts, and these sentencings, bring some amount of closure to those affected by this terrible crime.”

The Justice Department said many of the human remains sold by Lodge were subsequently resold at a profit.

Several of those buyers have been sentenced to jail time or were awaiting sentencing, the statement said.