Morgue Manager’s Wife Plead Guilty in Pennsylvania for Selling Human Body Parts from the Morgue in Ivy League College
The wife of a former morgue manager at Harvard Medical School has pled guilty after distributing stolen body parts from the school’s mortuary to customers around the country.
On Friday, Denise Lodge, 64, admitted guilt in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania on a charge of shipment of stolen property, according to court records.
An Arkansas morgue worker who made nearly $11,000 selling body parts on Facebook and a Massachusetts shop owner who used a human skull to make a “killer clown” doll that she then posted on Instagram were all alleged participants in the “egregious” and “extensive” conspiracy, according to federal authorities.
Claiming that the 64-year-old had negotiated online sales of human remains between 2018 and 2020, they revealed the allegations against Lodge, her husband Cedric Lodge, and five others last year.
According to PennLive.com, the objects that were sold included twenty-two hands, twenty-two feet, nine spines, parts of skulls, five dissected human faces, and two dissected heads.
Hope Lefeber, Lodge’s attorney, told WBUR in an interview from February that her client’s husband was the one behind the scheme, and that Lodge had only “went along with it.” Lefeber also mentioned that no money had been lost.
Before being cremated and returned to the donor’s family, bodies donated to Harvard Medical School are utilized for education, teaching, and research. However, the morgue manager once recognized a profit opportunity in the black market and sold body parts without informing the families.
