and sending them to buyers across the country.
Bone rooms — which Redman describes as typically large, cool, dry rooms with a distinct odor lying behind a wooden door with cabinets and drawers holding various remains – hold the key to hundreds of years of history in museums across the world. Cedric Lodge, the 55-year-old manager of the Harvard Anatomical Gift Program’s morgue, is accused of letting buyers come into the morgue to select which remains they wanted to buy, stealing those parts of donated cadavers, taking them home with him to New Hampshire and shipping them to buyers in the mail, prosecutors said. An abhorrent betrayal
Along with Lodge, six others were indicted in federal court for their alleged roles in the Harvard morgue scandal: Denise Lodge , 63 of Goffstown, New Hampshire; Katrina Maclean, 44, of Salem, Massachusetts; Joshua Taylor, 46, of West Lawn, Pennsylvania; Mathew Lampi, 52, of East Bethel, Minnesota; and Jeremy Pauley, 41, of Thompson, Pennsylvania. Candace Chapman-Scott, 36, of Little Rock, Arkansas, has also been indicted.
A Facebook post from April 3 on Pauley’s public page also shows two silver cufflinks with human skin and hair inlay. Pauley described it as a “Personal project.” But it has asked a panel of outside experts to review its body donation program. The report was expected to be released by the end of summer, but was recently delayed until October.The Harvard morgue scandal is not the first time a university’s morgue was caught for stealing and selling cadavers.
“In 42 states it’s completely legal to sell human remains in brick-and-mortar stores,” she said. “There is no federal law specifically stating that selling human remains is illegal.” This often occurs when the public learns of a disturbing event and a series of laws are proposed to prevent that particular thing from happening again – such as grave robbing or other laws specifically around remains that have already been buried.
In November 1990, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act was enacted to provide repatriation and disposition of certain Native American human remains and sacred objects.