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Authorities said Cedric Lodge was at the center of a ghoulish
scheme in which he shipped brains, skin, hands and faces to
buyers in Pennsylvania and elsewhere after cadavers donated to
Harvard were no longer needed for research.
His wife, Denise Lodge, was sentenced to just over a year in
prison for assisting him. They appeared Tuesday in federal court
in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
In one example, Cedric Lodge provided skin to a buyer so it
could be tanned into leather and bound into a book, a “deeply
horrifying reality,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Alisan Martin said
in a court filing.
“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,” Martin said.
She said Lodge 58, of Goffstown, New Hampshire, treated the
parts of “beloved human beings as if they were baubles to be
sold for profit” and collected thousands of dollars, from 2018
through March 2020.
After Harvard finishes using a donated body for research or
teaching, the body typically is returned to family or cremated.
Lodge acknowledged removing body parts before cremation.
Lodge, who was a morgue manager for 28 years, expressed regret
in court. Defense attorney Patrick Casey said his acts were
“egregious.”
“Mr. Lodge acknowledges the seriousness of his conduct and the
harm his actions have inflicted on both the deceased persons
whose bodies he callously degraded and their grieving families,”
Casey said in a court filing.
Harvard suspended the donation of bodies for five months in 2023
when charges were filed.
Prosecutors said at least six other people, including an
employee at an Arkansas crematorium, have pleaded guilty in the
investigation of body-parts trafficking.
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