Denise Lodge, wife of ex-Harvard Medical School morgue manager, pleads guilty in body part selling scheme

The wife of a former Harvard Medical School mortuary director has pleaded guilty after shipping stolen human body parts from the Ivy League school’s morgue to buyers across the country.

Denise Lodge, 64, pleaded guilty Friday in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania to a charge of interstate transportation of stolen property, court records showed.

Federal prosecutors say the “egregious” sprawling scheme also involved an Arkansas morgue worker who sold body parts on Facebook for nearly $11,000 and a Massachusetts store owner who bought a skull human to create a “killer clown” style doll which she then shared on Instagram.

They announced the charges against Lodge, her husband Cedric Lodge and five others last year and claimed the 64-year-old woman negotiated online sales of human remains between 2018 and 2020.

Two dozen hands, two feet, nine spines, portions of skulls, five dissected human faces and two dissected heads were among the items sold, PennLive.com reported.

Lodge’s attorney, Hope Lefeber, told WBUR in a February interview that her client’s husband was the mastermind and that she simply “accepted it,” adding that no money was lost.

“(It’s) more of a moral and ethical dilemma … than a criminal matter,” Lefeber said.

Bodies donated to Harvard Medical School are used for education, teaching and research before being cremated and returned to the donor’s family once used – but the morgue director saw an opportunity instead trading on the black market and sold body parts without the families’ knowledge.

Cedric Lodge was fired on May 6, with Harvard describing his alleged actions as “a heinous betrayal.”

The grisly crime revealed a booming demand for human remains in the United States.

Organ and tissue donations are “heavily regulated” by the federal government, but that oversight does not extend to whole bodies.

Only four states — New York, Virginia, Oklahoma and Florida — closely monitor whole-body donations and sales, experts told The Post in June.

Family members of the deceased are typically approached by hospices or funeral homes who work with unregulated bodywork agencies in exchange for free cremation.

Meanwhile, a body broker can sell a given corpse for around $5,000, although prices sometimes exceed $10,000.

Body parts also may be resold multiple times by non-tissue transplant banks that often target poor or elderly clients, National Funeral Directors Association officials said.

Human heads cost up to $3,000 in a market dominated mainly by medical schools, research centers, independent collectors and cosmetic surgery companies.

A spine can sell for $1,200, while a set of hands can cost around $1,000, depending on condition.

An entire body can sell for up to $11,000.