Inside the Harvard Morgue scandal where manager spent decades 'selling body parts on sick black market' while driving car with 'GRIM-R' plate - as families now scour evidence to see if they can spot their loved ones' SKULLS
>skulls
>Harvard
>Lodge
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13218713/harvard-morgue-body-parts-sold-black-market.html
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The case is still ongoing and 56-year-old Cedric Lodge maintains his innocence
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Fired in May, he manned the halls of Harvard Medical's morgue for some 27 years
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Lodge's ghoulish market of brains and skulls came crashing down last summer
Buckets of human remains. Desecrated corpses. A nationwide network linked to an Ivy League institution. These are all the components of a scheme that saw some 400 body parts stolen from Harvard Medical School's morgue, prosecutors say.
The case remains ongoing, and a seasoned staffer who ran the facility is said to be responsible. Enter 56-year-old Cedric Lodge - the unassuming man who manned the halls of windowless, subterranean space for some 27 years.
During that span, he allegedly stole brains, skin, and bones from right under university brass's noses and shipped them by mail to buyers from his New Hampshire home. He is also accused to letting 'customers' wander around the morgue to pick out what they wanted.
But the ghoulish black market came crashing down this past summer when cops received a tip that led them straight to one of the buyers' basements.
That call led to to Lodge's firing, seven arrests, and a slew of federal charges - with the scandal also providing a rare glimpse into the grisly underground world of organ trade.
As Harvard works to identify the bodies impacted, hundreds of families are now desperately seeking answers, as the fate of their loved ones remains up in the air. Lodge started work as Harvard Med's morgue manager back in 1995, assuming the post when he was 27 years old.
For years, he would run the school's Anatomical Gift Program, during which time thousands of Good Samaritans donated their bodies to the school for research purposes.
Lodge, meanwhile, lived 60 miles away with his wife in suburban New Hampshire, commuting an hour each day - eventually in a car sporting the license plate 'GRIM-R.'
At the school, he was tasked with preparing for and accepting donors' bodies, embalming them and overseeing their storage. When they were finished being used for research, the bodies would then be prepared by Lodge to be transported to a crematory - a crucial step prosecutors said Lodge eventually lost sight of. All the while, thousands of the most talented young medical minds in the country were being molded in the halls above. Four different deans - all working next-door - came and went, and Lodge still went unnoticed.
By 2013, feds said he was stealing supplies like body bags, citing a post to the online forum DeviantArt from the morgue man - who, by 2018, had allegedly upgraded to the corpses.
'I have been looking for customers interested in purchasing some heavy body bags and other miscellaneous medical toys,' Lodge wrote in a post resurfaced by prosecutors, looking for 'a little cash to plan a vacation.'
Prosecutors say he went on to invite interested parties into the hallowed university's off-limits morgue - before pawning off parts of donated cadavers like brains, skulls, and skin to the highest bidder. This reportedly continued for at least five years - in a practice that harked back to the days when professors relied on body snatchers to rob graves in the 18th and 19th centuries.
And he wasn't alone. His wife, Denise, oversaw electronic payments for the stolen human remains through PayPal. A supporting cast of buyers were also involved - funneling tens of thousands in the form of dozens of payments to the account.
>Many of these payments sported macabre descriptions - such as 'head number 7' or in one case, 'braiiiiiins.'It was one of these buyers who ended up inadvertently exposing the scandal.