Morgue supervisor’s spouse pleads responsible in body-part stealing scheme

The AP reports that Denise Lodge, the spouse of a former Harvard Medical College morgue supervisor, pleaded responsible on Friday on a federal cost of interstate transportation of stolen items.

Lodge, charged in federal courtroom in Pennsylvania, had participated in a scheme to ship stolen human physique components to consumers as a part of a nationwide black market with an Arkansas connection.

Cedric Lodge, who managed the morgue on the Anatomical Reward Program at Harvard Medical College, was on the heart of the scheme.

Among the many gadgets stolen, Penn.Live reports: two dozen arms, two ft, 9 spines, parts of skulls, 5 dissected human faces and two dissected heads. The gadgets had been offered to “oddity fans,” as Rolling Stone described them in an article last December, who collected heads, pores and skin, bones, brains and so forth. From that article:

Donors had been traded like baseball playing cards. And for years, members of the family, who thought their family members had been laid to relaxation, had been none the wiser.

Fairly sick stuff. Right here’s extra from Rolling Stone:

One of many Harvard morgue prospects, in line with prosecutors, was Katrina Maclean, who owned a retailer referred to as Kat’s Creepy Creations in Peabody, Massachusetts. “I paint creepy dolls and play with lifeless issues for a residing,” Maclean, who additionally pleaded not responsible, stated of her enterprise in a 2021 podcast. Her retailer, now closed, offered collectible figurines dressed up like haunted clowns, vampires, and different creatures — these dolls had been typically made up of human bones. One other patron was Pennsylvania oddity collector Joshua Taylor, who runs a ghoulish Instagram account referred to as Indignant Beard Antiques, that includes photographs of skulls, bones, and postmortem daguerreotypes of lifeless kids. (Like his fellow defendants, Taylor additionally pleaded not responsible. His lawyer declined to remark.) Lodge and his spouse additionally allegedly shipped stays throughout the nation to consumers they’d met on social media, and saved varied physique components at their New Hampshire dwelling.

Prosecutors allege that an Arkansas girl, Candace Chapman Scott, was concerned within the community, although not one of the filings say that she was straight related to the Lodges. From the Rolling Stone story:

Scott’s mortuary labored, partly, with the College of Arkansas for Medical Sciences to cremate stays from its Anatomical Reward Program, in addition to from native funeral houses. Scott’s indictment implies that she stole corpses from this system — the supply of latest our bodies to the varsity usually aligns together with her gross sales to an oddities collector named Jeremy Pauley — however a consultant from the varsity denies that its cadavers had been concerned. The varsity has since terminated its contract with Scott’s former mortuary. A lawyer for Scott confirms she’s in an Arkansas jail after present process a psychological analysis, and says, “We’re within the strategy of going by discovery.”

The indictment (numerous macabre particulars if that’s your factor) alleges that Scott took the physique components from cadavers that had been used for scientific analysis and offered them for 1000’s on Fb to 40-year-old Jeremy Pauley of Pennsylvania, whom she met by a web-based “oddities” group.

Scott pleaded not responsible and awaits trial in U.S. District Court docket for the Jap District of Arkansas in July.

The publish Morgue manager’s wife pleads guilty in body-part stealing scheme appeared first on Arkansas Times.