As if its reputation hasn’t suffered enough, Harvard University found out yesterday — the same day that the Homeland Security Department revoked certification of its foreign-students program — that a top official was purloining and selling human remains from its medical school morgue.
Cedric Lodge, 57, who ran the morgue, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to the crimes in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
The body-parts scheme was a nationwide conspiracy involving six people, including one who pleaded guilty last week. Among the gruesome sales from Harvard were hands, brains, and disembodied heads.
Arrests
The description of the four-year-long cadaver caper sounds like grist for a horror movie.
“The indictments and information allege that a nationwide network of individuals bought and sold human remains stolen from Harvard Medical School and an Arkansas mortuary,” the Justice Department (DOJ) reported in June 2023:
The charges allege that from 2018 through 2022, Cedric Lodge, who managed the morgue for the Anatomical Gifts Program at Harvard Medical School, located in Boston, Massachusetts, stole organs and other parts of cadavers donated for medical research and education before their scheduled cremations. Lodge at times transported stolen remains from Boston to his residence in Goffstown, New Hampshire, where he and his wife, Denise Lodge, sold the remains to Katrina Maclean, Joshua Taylor, and others, making arrangements via cellular telephone and social media websites. At times, Cedric Lodge allowed Maclean and Taylor to enter the morgue at Harvard Medical School and examine cadavers to choose what to purchase. On some occasions, Taylor transported stolen remains back to Pennsylvania. On other occasions, the Lodges shipped stolen remains to Taylor and others out of state.
And that wasn’t all the gang of ghouls did. They also sold stillborn babies.
“Maclean and Taylor resold the stolen remains for profit, including to Jeremy Pauley in the Middle District of Pennsylvania,” DOJ continued:
Jeremy Pauley also purchased stolen human remains from Candace Chapman Scott, who stole remains from her employer, a Little Rock, Arkansas mortuary and crematorium. Scott stole parts of cadavers she was supposed to have cremated, many of which had been donated to and used for research and educational purposes by an area medical school, as well as the corpses of two stillborn babies who were supposed to be cremated and returned as cremains to their families. Scott sold the stolen remains to Pauley and shipped them to Pauley in the Middle District of Pennsylvania. Pauley sold many of the stolen remains he purchased to other individuals, including Matthew Lampi. Lampi and Pauley bought and sold from each other over an extended period of time and exchanged over $100,000 in online payments.
Pauley pleaded guilty to conspiracy and interstate transportation of stolen property in September 2023.
Last week, Taylor pleaded guilty to interstate transport of stolen human remains.
Harvard’s Head Body Snatcher
This week, it was Lodge’s turn.
The 57-year-old manager of Harvard’s morgue also pleaded guilty to interstate transport of stolen human remains.
He “removed human remains, including organs, brains, skin, hands, faces, dissected heads, and other parts, from donated cadavers after they had been used for research and teaching purposes but before they could be disposed of according to the anatomical gift donation agreement between the donor and the school,” DOJ said:
Lodge took the remains without the knowledge or permission of his employer, the donor, or the donor’s family, and transport[ed] the remains to his home in New Hampshire. After he and his wife Denise Lodge sold the remains, they would ship the remains to the buyers in other states or the buyer[s] would take possession directly and transport the remains themselves. Remains stolen and sold by Lodge were transported from the morgue in Boston to locations in Salem, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania.
Again, Lodge kept the remains in his home for resale.
Lodge sold remains to Taylor, Andrew Ensanian, and others, DOJ said. Other defendants who pleaded guilty were Lampi, who landed 15 months in prison, and Angelo Pereyra, who received 18 months. Lodge and Ensanian also pleaded guilty. Lodge, Taylor, and Ensanian await sentencing.
Candace Chapman Scott, who stole remains in Arkansas, received 15 years.
DOJ did not report what happened to the remains after they were sold.
Harvard’s Troubles
Quite possibly, if Harvard’s powers-that-be focused on proper management of the university and its programs, instead of focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion; promoting far-left ideology; and importing anti-American foreign agitators disguised as students, the morgue scandal might never have occurred.
Last week, City Journal’s Christopher Rufo revealed internal documents that contained mandates to discriminate against white men. The discrimination violates black-letter civil rights laws.
Rufo and other writers were also behind revelations that multiple staff members, including former President Claudine Gay, are plagiarists. Gay was forced to resign the presidency, but is still employed, as are others. She plagiarized material for her doctoral thesis.
Harvard’s presidential search committee didn’t review Gay’s scholarship, and hired the DEI candidate after the shortest search in the university’s history.
Most recently, a top doctor in Harvard’s public health school told Rufo that the university’s obsession with DEI and promoting leftist, anti-American ideology had “totally corrupted it.”
Harvard has twice sued the Trump administration. Most recently, it persuaded a federal judge to temporarily restrain the administration from revoking certification of its foreign students program.
It also sued the administration for freezing more than $2 billion in pledged federal subsidies.
In early May, Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced that Harvard should no longer apply for federal subsidies because none would be given.
H/T: Breitbart
