2023-06-17 20:44:07
Boston. The director of the Harvard Medical School morgue allegedly removed body parts without permission and then sold them, US prosecutors said Wednesday.
A man identified as Cedric Lodge, 55, has been charged with trafficking stolen human remains, prosecutor Gerard Karam said in a statement.
“Some crimes defy understanding,” he commented.
“It’s tremendously appalling if you think that the victims volunteered to have their remains used to educate medical professionals and promote science and healing,” he added.
Lodge, his wife of 63 years, and five other alleged accomplices were accused of participating in a “national network” of buying and selling human remains.
The prosecution says that from 2018 to 2022 Lodge “stole organs and other parts of donated cadavers for medical research and education before their cremations.”
Lodge is accused of taking the remains from Harvard, in Boston, to his home in Goffstown, New Hampshire, where he and his wife sold them to two of the other defendants: Katrina Maclean and Joshua Taylor.
Lodge sometimes “allowed Maclean and Taylor to go into the morgue … and examine the bodies to choose what to buy,” the prosecution said.
According to prosecutors, Maclean and Taylor then sold the remains.
The indictment alleges that Maclean sent human skin to Taylor to be “tanned” into leather, the Boston Globe reported.
Lodge was in charge of the Harvard morgue’s anatomical donations program. He was fired on May 6, the university reported.
Another defendant allegedly stole remains from an Arkansas morgue where he worked, including the bodies of two stillborn babies who were to be cremated and returned to their families.
Two other defendants allegedly bought and sold remains with each other, exchanging more than $100,000 in online payments.
The Universal Online
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