(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Employees at Harvard Medical School’s morgue have been charged with stealing and selling human remains on the black market, according to the Daily Wire.
A recent grand-jury investigation determined that morgue manager Cedric Lodge and his wife, Denise, allegedly had been stealing internal organs from the morgue since 2018.
According to the charges, Lodge allowed customers to go into the morgue and shop for the organs they wanted to buy. He also stole parts of donated cadavers—such as brains, skin and bones—and shipped them to customers by mail.
Along with the Lodges, the indictment named four other accomplices: Katrina MacLean, Joshua Taylor, Mathew Lampi, Jeremy Pauley and a mortician from Arkansas were all charged with conspiracy and transporting stolen goods across state lines. If convicted, they face up to 15 years in prison.
MacLean, an alleged customer, paid for two desiccated faces in 2020. Lodge charged her $600.
Pauley purportedly bought the remains of two stillborn babies.
Taylor allegedly purchased brains from Lodge, paying over $37,000 for those and other human remains.
One defendant posted on Instagram advertising the sale of human bones through their store, Kat’s Creepy Creations, out of Peabody, Massachusetts.
“If you’re in the market for human bones hit me up!” the post read.
Investigators gave no indication of what happened to the human remains or the defendants’ motives for purchasing them.
Harvard Medical School had no direct involvement in the scheme and fired Lodge on May 6, ending his 28-year tenure.
“We are appalled to learn that something so disturbing could happen on our campus — a community dedicated to healing and serving others,” the school’s medical dean of faculty and dean for medical education said in a statement.
“The reported incidents are a betrayal of HMS and, most importantly, each of the individuals who altruistically chose to will their bodies to HMS through the Anatomical Gift Program to advance medical education and research,” they added.
