WILLIAMSPORT - The criminal case of the former morgue manager at Harvard Medical School accused of selling pieces of dead bodies asks the question of whether human remains can be considered "goods."
Cedric Lodge has pleaded not guilty to two charges in a federal indictment brought in 2023 and on March 3 filed a motion to dismiss it in Pennsylvania federal court. He and two of his customers have been charged after it was revealed he was selling body parts from corpses that had been donated to Harvard Medical School for research.
Civil lawsuits in Boston painted a wild picture of Lodge as a ghoul who took his job in the morgue way too far, even noting his personalized license plate - "Grim-R."
"The Grim Reaper posted images of himself dressed up in the garb of an undertaker in a Dickens novel with a black top hate and overcoat," one lawsuit said. "His license plate and open association with macabre hobbies revealed his view of his job at the morgue as a backdrop for his fantasies instead of a place of reverence and respect."
A federal grand jury indicted him on charges he conspired to "unlawfully transport... stolen goods, wares and merchandise, that is, human remains, of the value of $5,000 or more." The second count says he did this over state lines.
But he says human remains do not meet the definitions of "goods, wares and merchandise." They have been traditionally defined to include personal property ordinarily the subject of commerce.
"While Counts 1 and 2 are premised on the interstate transportation of stolen 'property' in the form of 'human remains,' courts are in agreement in finding that human remains cannot constitute 'personal property,'" the motion to dismiss says.
His lawyer - Patrick Casey of Myers, Brier & Kelly in Scranton - went all the way back to an 1862 ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. In Wynkoop v. Wynkoop, that court held, "There is no right of property in such remains, from their very nature. No authority for such claim can be shown in any civilized community from the time of Adam."
More recently, the Nevada Supreme Court in 2010 made a ruling in a case involving the alleged theft of organs from the corpse of a man who apparently died from excessive alcohol and drugs during a bachelor party in Las Vegas.
The court said the only person who could bring an emotional distress claim would be the person with the right to dispose of the body. It said, "Consistent with the majority of jurisdictions that have addressed this issue, we cannot conclude that there is a property right in a deceased body or its remains."
Acting U.S. Attorney John Gurganus' office replied to these arguments on March 17, calling the contention it is perfectly legal to buy and sell human remains but remains can't be stolen because they can't be legally bought "an absurd argument."
The Third Circuit held in 1959 "goods, wares and merchandise" is a comprehensive designation of personal property in a case of involving valuable maps. Cases cited by Lodge and his co-defendants arose from "very different factual contexts" than this one, the feds say.
"None of the defendants have identified any cases holding that Section 2314 does not apply where human remains were stolen and transported across state lines," Gurganos' staff wrote.
"Second, the facts of this are clearly inapposite to the cases cited by the defendants, as those cases are premised on the assumption that human remains cannot be bought and sold, but... that's exactly what these defendants did."
An 1897 Massachusetts decision called human remains "a sort of quasi-property" and seven years later, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court found the next of kin had a property right in the remains of their son.
"Harvard had a duty to safeguard all donated remains and had committed to proper disposition and/or return of the remains to a designated next of kin," prosecutors wrote.
"In order to carry out that duty, the school must have had that quasi-property right to possess and keep custody of those remains until such time as delivery was made. Thus, any interference with the performance of that duty by taking the remains away without permission and selling them was a theft and a violation of that quasi-property right."
Katrina MacLean of Salem, Mass., and Joshua Taylor of West Lawn, Pa., are co-defendants, along with Lodge's wife. MacLean operates a store called Kat's Creepy Creations.
She explained her involvement by pointing at her "somewhat unusual interest" in a nationwide oddities community that collects body parts. The indictment says she sold remains stolen by Lodge and Taylor was a purchaser.
MacLean paid $600 to Lodge for two dissected faces in 2020, it says. She allegedly shipped human skin to a man she wanted to turn it into leather.
Taylor, meanwhile, paid Lodge's wife Denise more than $37,000 over three years for body parts, the indictment says. Memos on money transfers said things like "head number 7" and "braiiiiiins."
In Massachusetts civil court, Harvard won dismissal of several lawsuits against it by family members alleging emotional damages from finding out their loved ones were treated this way. That decision has been appealed.