A former Harvard Medical School morgue manager is among those facing federal charges for an elaborate scheme that involved the theft and sale of various body parts. According to a federal indictment handed down in Pennsylvania yesterday, 55-year-old Cedric Lodge was part of a widespread conspiracy to ship, purchase, and sell stolen human remains, including brains, faces, hearts, and skin across state lines between 2018 and 2022.
Lodge was charged on June 14 alongside his wife Denise, Katrina Maclean, Joshua Taylor, and Mathew Lampi for conspiracy and interstate transport of stolen goods. They join Jeremy Pauley, who was charged last year and pleaded guilty on June 13, as well as Candace Chapman Scott, an employee at a mortuary in Arkansas where funeral homes and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences sent remains. The indictment claims that they formed their network to buy and sell body parts after connecting on social media, per ABC News.
The Harvard Medical School morgue hosts the Anatomical Gift Program, designed to help medical students learn about human insides. Prosecutors allege that Lodge stole dissected portions of the remains and took them to his home in New Hampshire. From there, he and his wife would ship the various entrails to buyers. Taylor, for example, allegedly made 39 PayPal transactions totaling over $37,000, including a $1,000 payment for a head and a $200 payment "with a memo that read 'braiiiiiins.'"
George Daley, dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard University, and Edward Hundert, the dean for medical education at Harvard Medical School, called Lodge's actions "an abhorrent betrayal" of his responsibilities in a statement to the Harvard community yesterday. “We owe it to ourselves, our community, our profession, and our patients and their loved ones to ensure that HMS is worthy of the donors who have entrusted their bodies to us,” they said.
Meanwhile, the families of those potentially affected by these sales have been grappling with the knowledge that their loved ones' remains might have been a part of this scheme.
Sarah Hill's aunt Christine Eppich died of pancreatic cancer in 2021 and arranged for her body to be donated to Harvard's anatomical program. "Christine wanted other people to benefit from her passing so that she could be studied," Hill told Boston 25 News. "And we as family members gave her body to Harvard thinking that she was in the best hands possible."
Paula Peltonavich of New Hampshire spoke to CBS News Boston yesterday about the news. Her father, Nick Pichowicz, donated his body to Harvard after he died in 2019. "We're angry and hurt," she added. "I just don't see how people could do something like this. I can't understand."
U.S. Attorney Gerard Karam vowed in a statement to help these families find some form of closure. "Some crimes defy understanding," the prosecutor said in a statement. "It is particularly egregious that so many of the victims here volunteered to allow their remains to be used to educate medical professionals and advance the interests of science and healing. For them and their families to be taken advantage of in the name of profit is appalling. With these charges, we are seeking to secure some measure of justice for all these victims."
