The mortuary manager at Harvard Medical School, Cedric Lodge, has been charged with stealing, selling, and shipping human body parts. The 55-year-old Lodge is accused of stealing the dismembered pieces of human cadavers, transporting them to his house in Goffstown, New Hampshire, and selling them online according to a federal indictment out of Pennsylvania. The indictment, which was made public on Wednesday, also included charges against Lodge’s 63-year-old wife Denise, and two accused purchasers, 44-year-old Katrina MacLean of Salem and 46-year-old Joshua Taylor of West Lawn, Pennsylvania. The Lodges both appeared in federal court in Concord, New Hampshire Wednesday afternoon. Cedric Lodge said nothing as he left court on Wednesday.
On Wednesday afternoon, MacLean appeared in federal court in Boston where she was accused of moving stolen goods both inside and outside of state boundaries. The maximum term for this is 10 years, but the judge released her because it was a non-violent offense. She will eventually need to appear in court in Pennsylvania. When she was told that she may go home, MacLean wiped away her tears. As she walked out of court, she said nothing, and her attorney declined to comment. 52-year-old Mathew Lampi of East Bethel, Minnesota, and 41-year-old Jeremy Pauley of Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, were also charged in the probe. Candace Chapman Scott, of Little Rock, Arkansas, was the eighth person to get an indictment. She’s accused of stealing and selling body parts from a mortuary and crematorium.
MacLean owns a store in Peabody called “Kat’s Creepy Creations.” Back in March, the FBI searched the store and MacLean’s home in Salem, Massachusetts. MacLean had no comment to WBZ TV at the time. “They would have had a search warrant and specifically they would have had information that gave it probable cause to believe this activity was going on,” former FBI agent Jennifer Coffindafer told WBZ. “So, they would be looking specifically for a body part, human remains, obviously.”
The aim of the conspiracy was “to profit from the interstate shipment, purchase, and sale of stolen human remains
Prosecutors say she, Taylor, and the Lodges took human remains from the morgue and brought them to New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, where Taylor lives, from 2018 to March of this year. According to the criminal complaint, the object of the conspiracy was “to profit from the interstate shipment, purchase, and sale of stolen human remains.” Prosecutors say Cedric Lodge stole “heads, brains, skin, bones, and other human remains, without the knowledge or permission of HMS, and removed those remains from the morgue in Massachusetts and transported them to his residence in New Hampshire.”
According to allegations, Lodge and his wife “sometimes shipped those remains through the United States Postal Service to Pennsylvania and elsewhere” after selling the stolen body parts to MacLean, Taylor, and others. Prosecutors claimed that on occasion Lodge allowed MacLean, Taylor, and others access to the mortuary so they could choose which body parts to purchase. (https://fiberclean.com/)
The theft and trafficking of human remains strike at the very essence of what makes us human
Additionally, MacLean is charged with selling the human remains and keeping them at her Peabody store. Prosecutors claimed that in one instance, MacLean “agreed to purchase two dissected faces from Cedric Lodge for $600” in October 2020. Around another instance, authorities asserted that around the middle of 2021, MacLean sent human skin to Pauley in Pennsylvania and “engaged his services to tan the skin to create leather.”
Taylor allegedly sent more than $37,000 to Denise Lodge to pay for body parts stolen from the morgue by her husband, according to the criminal complaint. “On November 20, 2020, Taylor sent Denise Lodge $200 with a memo that read, “braiiiiiins,” the complaint said. “Some crimes defy understanding,” U.S. Attorney for Pennsylvania Gerard Karam said in a statement. “The theft and trafficking of human remains strikes at the very essence of what makes us human. It is particularly egregious that so many of the victims here volunteered to allow their remains to be used to educate medical professionals and advance the interests of science and healing. For them and their families to be taken advantage of in the name of profit is appalling. With these charges, we are seeking to secure some measure of justice for all these victims.”