Morgue Misconduct Unearthed: Wife of Ex-manager Guilty in Body Parts Case

The wife of a former Harvard Medical School morgue manager has pleaded guilty to a federal felony after authorities claimed she sold stolen human body parts such as hands, feet, and heads to customers.

Denise Lodge, 64, of Goffstown, New Hampshire, pled guilty Friday in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania to interstate transportation of stolen goods, according to court records.

Last year, federal authorities charged Lodge, her husband Cedric, and five other persons in an alleged plan to buy and sell human remains stolen from Harvard and an Arkansas mortuary.

Prosecutors claim Denise Lodge negotiated the online sale of a variety of objects between 2018 and March 2020, including two dozen hands, two feet, nine spines, skull pieces, five dissected human faces, and two dissected heads, according to PennLive.com.

Authorities stated that dissected sections of cadavers donated to the school were removed between 2018 and early 2023 without the school’s knowledge or approval. Jeremy Pauley of Thompson, Pennsylvania, is waiting for his sentence after pleading guilty to conspiracy and interstate transportation of stolen items last year.

Hope Lefeber, Denise Lodge’s attorney, told WBUR in a February interview that her client’s husband “was doing this, and she just kind of went along with it.” “What happened here is wrong,” she added, but no one lost money. The problem was “more of a moral and ethical dilemma … than a criminal case.”

Bodies donated to Harvard Medical School are used for educational, teaching, and research purposes. When cadavers are no longer needed, they are often burned and the ashes returned to the donor’s family or interred in a cemetery.