Cedric Lodge, who ran the morgue for more than 20 years before his arrest in 2023, received the eight-year sentence from a U.S. District Judge in Pennsylvania on Tuesday
By Asaye Bankole
The former manager of the Harvard Medical School morgue has been sentenced to eight years in prison for stealing and selling body parts taken from cadavers donated for medical research.
Cedric Lodge, who ran the morgue for more than 20 years before his arrest in 2023, received the eight-year sentence from a U.S. District Judge in Pennsylvania on Tuesday.
“He caused profound emotional suffering to countless family members who were left wondering whether the bodies of their loved ones had been mistreated,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.
Lodge, 58, pleaded guilty in May to transporting stolen goods across state lines. Prosecutors said he removed heads, faces, brains, skin, and hands from cadavers in the morgue, took them to his home in Goffstown, New Hampshire, and sold them to multiple individuals.
Lodge’s wife, Denise, was also sentenced to one year in prison for helping to facilitate the sale of the stolen organs and body parts to several people, including two in Pennsylvania, who then mostly resold them.
Prosecutors urged District Judge Matthew Brann in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, to impose the maximum sentence of 10 years, arguing that the crime “shocks the conscience” and was committed “for the amusement of the disturbing ‘oddities’ community.”
Lodge’s lawyer, Patrick Casey, asked the judge to show leniency, while acknowledging “the harm his actions have inflicted on both the deceased individuals whose bodies he heartlessly violated and their grieving families.”
Harvard Medical School has not yet commented on Lodge’s sentencing, but has previously described his actions as “abhorrent and inconsistent with the standards and values that Harvard, our anatomical donors, and their loved ones expect and deserve.”
In October, a U.S. court ruled that Harvard Medical School could be sued by family members who had donated the bodies of loved ones for medical research. In that decision, Chief Justice Scott L. Kafker characterized the case as a “macabre scheme spanning several years.”
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