Ex-Harvard morgue manager gets eight years for selling stolen body parts

The former manager of the Harvard Medical School morgue has been sentenced to eight years in prison for stealing and selling body parts taken from cadavers donated for medical research, closing a case prosecutors described as both grotesque and deeply damaging to grieving families.

Cedric Lodge, who ran the morgue for more than 20 years before his arrest in 2023, was sentenced on Tuesday by a US district judge in Pennsylvania. The 58-year-old pleaded guilty in May to transporting stolen goods across state lines.

“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.

According to prosecutors, Lodge systematically removed heads, faces, brains, skin and hands from donated cadavers, transporting them from the morgue to his home in Goffstown, New Hampshire, where he sold them to buyers across several states. The body parts were allegedly marketed within what prosecutors called the disturbing “oddities” community.

Lodge’s wife, Denise Lodge, was sentenced to one year in prison for helping facilitate the sales. Prosecutors said the stolen remains were sold to several individuals, including two buyers in Pennsylvania, who then mostly resold them.

The government had pushed for the maximum possible sentence of 10 years, arguing that Lodge’s conduct “shocks the conscience” and was carried out for personal amusement rather than financial necessity.

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

Harvard Medical School has not commented on the sentencing itself, but has previously condemned Lodge’s actions as “abhorrent and inconsistent with the standards and values that Harvard, our anatomical donors, and their loved ones expect and deserve”.

The criminal case runs alongside mounting civil fallout. In October, a US court ruled that Harvard Medical School could be sued by families who donated the bodies of loved ones for medical research. In that decision, Chief Justice Scott L Kafker described the operation as a “macabre scheme spanning several years”.