Body parts that had been donated to Harvard Medical School were stolen by the morgue manager and sold for his own personal gain, federal investigators said Wednesday.
Morgue boss Cedric Lodge and his wife, Denise, were charged with running the scheme from 2018 to 2022. Katrina MacLean and Joshua Taylor were identified by the feds as repeat buyers.
“Some crimes defy understanding,” said U.S. Attorney Gerard M. Karam. “The theft and trafficking of human remains strikes at the very essence of what makes us human.”
Heads, brains, skin and bones were all stolen from Harvard Medical School’s morgue, according to the feds. The body parts had been donated to the school for educational purposes.
But rather than keep them in the morgue for student use, the Lodges saw a money-making opportunity, federal prosecutors said. They allegedly allowed potential buyers to tour the morgue and pick exactly what they wanted.
From there, Lodge would take the body parts 60 miles north to his home in Goffstown, N.H., and ship them to buyers, including MacLean and Taylor, according to investigators.
The indictment said Taylor paid Denise Lodge more than $37,300 over three years for various body parts. In one case, he used PayPal to send $200 with the memo “braiiiiiins.”
After illegally acquiring the remains from the Lodges and Harvard Medical School, MacLean and Taylor then resold them, according to the feds. MacLean owned a store named Kat’s Creepy Creations in Peabody, Mass. Meanwhile, Taylor is accused of selling the body parts to Jeremy Pauley, a central Pennsylvania resident.
Pauley paid nearly $9,000 to MacLean and $40,000 to Taylor for various body parts, the feds said.
Pauley was not named as a defendant in the indictment because he was charged separately with criminal information, the Justice Department said in a press release. The disparity implies that Pauley has already cut a plea deal with the feds.
Last year, Pauley was arrested by local authorities after he bought stolen body parts from a mortuary in Arkansas.
With Tim Balk
