The manager of the morgue at Harvard University’s renowned medical school is said to have illegally stolen body parts from his workplace and sold them. Pennsylvania State Attorney Gerard Karam said 55-year-old Cedric Lodge was charged with body theft.
In addition to Lodge, his wife Denise and five others are suspected of buying and selling human remains as part of a “countrywide network”. Karam called the crimes “particularly egregious” as many of the victims were organ donors who donated their remains to science.
Prosecutors believe Lodge stole “organs and other body parts” prior to her cremation from 2018 to 2022. He is accused of taking the parts from the Harvard University campus in Boston to his home in Goffstown, New Hampshire, and then selling them to two other suspects. At times, he said, he allowed the two buyers to visit the morgue “and choose what they wanted to buy.”
The buyers then resold the body parts at a profit. The newspaper “Boston Globe” reported that, among other things, skin had been sold “to make leather out of it”. Lodge ran the morgue for Harvard’s body donation program. According to the university, he was released on May 6.
Another co-accused allegedly stole stolen body parts from an Arkansas morgue, including the bodies of two stillborn babies, who were scheduled for cremation. Two other suspects are said to have sold body parts to each other and exchanged a total of $100,000 in payments. (AFP)
2023-06-15 07:09:44
#Body #theft #United #States #Harvard #University #morgue #sold #body #parts
