AP
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A former manager of the Harvard Medical School morgue in Boston was sentenced to eight years in prison for stealing and selling body parts “as if they were baubles.”
Authorities stated Cedric Lodge was at the center of a ghoulish scheme during which he shipped brains, pores and skin, palms and faces to consumers in Pennsylvania and elsewhere after cadavers donated to Harvard have been not wanted for analysis.
His spouse, Denise Lodge, was sentenced to only over a yr in prison for aiding him. They appeared Tuesday in federal court docket in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
In one instance, Cedric Lodge offered pores and skin to a purchaser so it might be tanned into leather-based and certain right into a e-book, a “deeply horrifying reality,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Alisan Martin stated in a court docket submitting.
“In another, Cedric and Denise Lodge sold a man’s face — perhaps to be kept on a shelf, perhaps to be used for something even more disturbing,” Martin stated.
She stated Lodge 58, of Goffstown, New Hampshire, handled the components of “beloved human beings as if they were baubles to be sold for profit” and picked up hundreds of {dollars}, from 2018 by March 2020.
After Harvard finishes utilizing a donated physique for analysis or instructing, the physique usually is returned to household or cremated. Lodge acknowledged eradicating physique components earlier than cremation.
Lodge, who was a morgue manager for 28 years, expressed remorse in court docket. Defense legal professional Patrick Casey stated his acts have been “egregious.”
“Mr. Lodge acknowledges the seriousness of his conduct and the harm his actions have inflicted on both the deceased persons whose bodies he callously degraded and their grieving families,” Casey stated in a court docket submitting.
Harvard suspended the donation of our bodies for 5 months in 2023 when costs have been filed.
Prosecutors stated not less than six different folks, together with an worker at an Arkansas crematorium, have pleaded responsible within the investigation of body-parts trafficking.