Cedric Lodge and his license plate
WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. – The former manager of the morgue at Harvard Medical School decided to harvest and sell body parts because of financial troubles caused by his wife’s breast cancer.
That’s the story told in Denise Lodge’s presentence report, filed Dec. 9. She, her husband Cedric and others were indicted on charges of interstate transport of stolen goods, and Denise’s lawyers are asking for only probation after her guilty plea.
Cedric, meanwhile, faces up to 10 years in prison. He sold body parts like skin and head from corpses donated to Harvard Medical School, and civil lawsuits in Boston painted a wild picture of him as a ghoul who took his job in the morgue way too far, even noting his personalized license plate – “Grim-R.”
But the presentence report says his motivation was money.
“It was only after Denise became so sick with Stage IV breast cancer that she could no longer work, and the family’s finances began to collapse, that her husband, Cedric Lodge, turned to the criminal conduct at issue,” attorney Hope Lefeber wrote.
“As their income dwindled and Denise’s medical needs increased, Cedric came up with a plan to sell human remains. Denise initially refused.”
But Denise was worn down by her cancer and his persistence, the report says, and in a “vulnerable state,” she eventually agreed.
“None of this excuses her conduct,” the report says. “Denise knows what she did was wrong. She has accepted responsibility, and she will live with the shame of this offense for the rest of her life.”
The report details her troubled youth in foster care, her hardships caring for daughter with lifelong developmental disabilities and responsibilities caring for Cedric, who has suffered several strokes, lost much of his vision and is showing signs of dementia, the report says.
Lodge and his co-defendants unsuccessfully argued in motions to dismiss their criminal indictments that pieces of dead bodies can't be considered "goods." Katrina MacLean of Salem, Mass., and Joshua Taylor of West Lawn, Pa., are co-defendants. MacLean operates a store called Kat's Creepy Creations.
She explained her involvement by pointing at her "somewhat unusual interest" in a nationwide oddities community that collects body parts. The indictment says she sold remains stolen by Lodge and Taylor was a purchaser.
MacLean paid $600 to Lodge for two dissected faces in 2020, it says. She allegedly shipped human skin to a man whom she wanted to turn it into leather.
Taylor, who also pleaded guilty, paid Denise more than $37,000 over three years for body parts, the indictment says. Memos on money transfers said things like "head number 7" and "braiiiiiins."
In October, the Massachusetts Supreme Court reopened civil cases from plaintiffs who sued Harvard, finding the university was not immune from suit under the “good faith” defense of the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act.
Lawyers included pictures of Lodge and his license plate in their complaints.
"The Grim Reaper posted images of himself dressed up in the garb of an undertaker in a Dickens novel with a black top hate and overcoat," one lawsuit said. "His license plate and open association with macabre hobbies revealed his view of his job at the morgue as a backdrop for his fantasies instead of a place of reverence and respect."
Denise says her health has deteriorated since she was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2003. In 2015, she discovered it had metastasized to her lungs, liver, lymph nodes and bones, and she has since undergone numerous surgeries.
“Her declining health, combined with exhaustion, pain and emotional depletion, left her uniquely susceptible to pressure at the time of the offense,” her lawyer wrote.
