Harvard mortuary director's wife pleads guilty in human remains case

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WILLIAMSPORT. Pa. – The wife of a former Harvard Medical School mortuary manager has pleaded guilty to federal charges after investigators said she shipped stolen human body parts, including arms, legs and heads, to buyers.

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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 goods.

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Federal prosecutors announced charges last year against Lodge, her husband, Cedric, and five others in an alleged scheme in which a national network bought and sold human remains stolen from Harvard and an Arkansas morgue.

Prosecutors allege Denise Lodge negotiated the online sale of several items between 2028 and March 2020, including twenty hands, two legs, nine vertebrae, parts of a skull, five severed human faces and two severed heads, according to PennLive.com.

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Authorities said the dismembered body parts donated to the school were removed between 2018 and early 2023 without the school's knowledge or permission. Jeremy Pauley of Thompson, Pennsylvania, is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty last year to conspiracy and interstate transportation of stolen property.

Denise Lodge's attorney, Hope Lefebvre, told WBUR in a February interview that her client's husband was “doing it and she was with him.” He said “what happened here was wrong”, but no one lost money and the issue was “not a criminal case, but a moral and ethical dilemma”.

Bodies donated to Harvard Medical School are used for educational, teaching, or research purposes. After they are no longer needed, bodies are usually cremated and the ashes returned to the donor's family or buried in a cemetery.

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