Related video: Harvard Morgue Manager Was Selling Body Parts
A Harvard Medical School morgue manager and his wife are among five people who have been charged with stealing and selling human remains.
Cedric Lodge, who was fired on 6 May, allegedly stole “heads, brains, skin and bones” from cadavers that were donated to the school, federal prosecutors in Pennsylvania said on Wednesday.
He and his wife Denise sold the body parts to buyers in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, sending them in the post, according to the indictment. In one case, the buyer allegedly intended to tan skin into leather.
The scheme, which is part of a larger black market, is alleged to have gone on from 2018 to 2022.
Mr Lodge, who was hired by Harvard in Boston, Massachusetts in 1995, allegedly sometimes allowed potential buyers into the morgue to choose which body parts they wanted.
After the horrifying allegations emerged, family members who donated their loved ones’ bodies to medical research spoke of their horror.
“We were just disgusted,” Paula Peltonovich, whose father’s remains were donated to the school, told the Boston Globe on Thursday. “Sick, like we were going to throw up.”
