WILLIAMSPORT. Father. — The wife of a former Harvard Medical School mortuary manager has pleaded guilty to a federal charge after investigators said she shipped stolen human body parts — including hands, feet and heads — to buyers.
Denise Lodge, 64, of Goffstown, New Hampshire, pleaded guilty Friday in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania to one count of interstate transportation of stolen property, court records show.
Federal prosecutors announced charges last year against Lodge, her husband Cedric and five other people in an alleged scheme in which a nationwide network of people bought and sold human remains stolen from Harvard and a mortuary in Arkansas.
Prosecutors allege that between 2028 and March 2020, Denise Lodge negotiated the online sale of a number of items, including two dozen hands, two feet, nine spines, parts of skulls, five dissected human faces and two dissected heads, PennLive.com reported.
Authorities said dissected parts of the carcasses donated to the school were taken without the school’s knowledge or consent between 2018 and early 2023. A Pennsylvania man, Jeremy Pauley of Thompson, is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty last year to conspiracy and interstate transportation of stolen property.
Denise Lodge’s attorney, Hope Lefeber, told WBUR in a February interview that her client’s husband “did this and she just went along with it.” She said “what happened here is wrong,” but no one lost money and the case was “more of a moral and ethical dilemma … than a criminal case.”
Bodies donated to Harvard Medical School are used for teaching, educational or research purposes. Once no longer needed, the cadavers are usually cremated and the ashes returned to the donor’s family or buried in a cemetery.
