Ex-Harvard morgue manager who sold body parts sentenced to eight years in jail

The former manager of the Harvard Medical School morgue has been sentenced to eight years in prison for the theft and sale of body parts, taken from cadavers that had been donated for medical research.

Cedric Lodge, who managed the morgue for more than two decades before being arrested in 2023, was given an eight-year sentence by a United States (US) district judge in Pennsylvania on 17 December.

He caused deep emotional harm to an untold number of family members left to wonder about the mistreatment of their loved ones’ bodies, prosecutors wrote in a court filing.

Lodge (58) pleaded guilty to transporting stolen goods across state lines in May, with prosecutors stating he had taken heads, faces, brains, skin, and hands from cadavers in the morgue to his home at Goffstown, New Hampshire, before selling them to several individuals.

Lodge’s wife, Denise, was also sentenced to one year in prison for her role in facilitating the sale of the stolen organs and body parts to several individuals, including two people in Pennsylvania, who then mostly resold them.

Prosecutors asked district judge Matthew Brann at Williamsport, Pennsylvania, to give Lodge 10 years in prison, the maximum sentence for the crime, which they said “shocks the conscience” and was carried out “for the amusement of the disturbing ‘oddities’ community”.

Patrick Casey, a lawyer for Lodge, asked the judge for leniency, while conceding “the harm his actions have inflicted on both the deceased persons whose bodies he callously degraded and their grieving families”.

Harvard Medical School has yet to comment on Lodge’s sentencing, but has previously called his actions “abhorrent and inconsistent with the standards and values that Harvard, our anatomical donors, and their loved ones expect and deserve”.

A US court ruled in October that Harvard Medical School could be sued by family members who had donated the bodies of loved ones for medical research.

In that case, chief justice Scott Kafker described the affair as a “macabre scheme spanning several years”. – Al Jazeera

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