Morgue manager jailed as he sold body parts and faces to people who ‘bound books with skin’

A morgue manager has been jailed after a macabre scheme in which he sold body parts on to people was uncovered.

58-year-old Cedric Lodge took heads, faces, brains, skin and hands from bodies that had been donated to Harvard Medical School, and were stored in the morgue. The scheme went on for years, with him taking the body parts to his home in Goffstown, New Hampshire, before he sold them to several individuals between 2018 and March 2020.

Lodge had worked at the medical school for 28 years, before he was arrested in 2023. His wife, 65-year-old Denise, was sentenced to one year and one day in prison for her role in facilitating the sale of stolen organs and body parts.

It was said he would steal the body parts when they were no longer needed for research, but before bodies were returned to family members to be cremated. Prosecutors estimated the Lodges earned between $40,000 and $95,000 for the scheme.

In one case, that sounds like it’s from a true crime film based on Ed Gein, Lodge sold skin to one buyer who wished to tan it into leather and bind it into a book.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Alisan Martin said in a court filing: “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.”

Prosecutors said the motive behind doing so was “for amusement” and added: “He caused deep emotional harm to an untold number of family members left to wonder about the mistreatment of their loved ones’ bodies.”

Harvard Medical School previously called the actions “abhorrent and inconsistent with the standards and values that Harvard, our anatomical donors, and their loved ones expect and deserve.”

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This week, Cedric Lodge was sentenced to eight years in jail, after he pleaded guilty to transporting stolen human remains across state lines, earlier this year.

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