Harvard Medical School mortuary manager charged with alleged sale of body parts

The manager of the mortuary at the Harvard Medical School, Cedric Lodge, has been charged with selling stolen body parts including heads, brains and inner entrails.

A Pennsylvania federal indictment on Wednesday indicated that Lodge, 55, stole dissected portions of human cadavers and took them to his home in Goffstown, New Hampshire, and then sold them online.

The indictment also included Lodge’s 63-year-old wife, Denise and two alleged buyers, 44-year-old Katrina MacLean of Salem and 46-year-old Joshua Taylor of West Lawn, who were charged alongside the morgue manager a federal court in Concord, New Hampshire.

Prosecutors say MacLean, Taylor, and the Lodges took human remains from the morgue and brought them to New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, where Taylor lives, from 2018 to March of this year.

In the criminal complaint, the object of the conspiracy was “to profit from the interstate shipment, purchase, and sale of stolen human remains,” the indictment said.

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Prosecutors told the court that Lodge stole “heads, brains, skin, bones, and other human remains, without the knowledge or permission of HMS, and removed those remains from the morgue in Massachusetts and transported them to his residence in New Hampshire.”

U.S. Attorney’s Office believe Lodge to have engaged in the unlawful trafficking of human remains between 2018 through to August 16, 2022 whilst working in the morgue as part of the university’s Anatomical Gift Program.

MacLean was also arraigned at another federal court in Boston Wednesday afternoon, where she was charged with transporting stolen goods within and with out of state lines.

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