(New York) The director of the mortuary of the prestigious American University Harvard Medical School, his wife and four other people, were indicted on Wednesday by the justice of the United States of trafficking in organs and human remains.
“Some crimes are beyond comprehension,” Pennsylvania U.S. federal prosecutor Gerard Karam was quoted in a statement announcing the indictment and arrest of 55-year-old Cedric Lodge and his wife Denise Lodge. 63 years old.
The couple and four other people are being prosecuted, among other things, for “complicity in theft and transport of stolen goods”, according to the press release, confirming information from the Boston Globethe major regional daily newspaper in New England, in the northeastern United States.
The Lodges and a third person, Katrina Maclean, 44, of Massachusetts, were arrested without incident on Wednesday, according to US authorities.
Cedric Lodge, in particular, director until May of the Harvard Medical School morgue, is accused of having been part from 2018 to 2022 of a “national network of individuals who bought and sold stolen human remains at Harvard and in an Arkansas morgue,” according to federal justice.
The head of the prestigious university’s morgue, one of the oldest in the United States, located near Boston, “stealed organs and other parts of corpses donated to science for research and education medical, before their cremation”.
“The theft and trafficking of human remains touch the very essence of what makes us human beings”, thundered prosecutor Gerard Karam, denouncing “heinous” and “appalling” acts and promising that justice will be served for the “victims” and their loved ones.
In an email released to the public and titled “a heinous betrayal”, the deans of the faculty and the Harvard medical school, George Daley and Edward Hundert, expressed their “dismay to learn that something so disturbing could arrive on a campus dedicated to the care and service of others”.
Mr Lodge was fired in early May and “investigators believe he acted without assistance from anyone at Harvard”, university officials said, noting that the other people charged in the case had no “no connection with Harvard”.
In France, a scandal erupted after the revelations by the press, at the end of 2019, of the appalling conditions for the conservation of bodies donated to science within the University of Paris-Descartes, in the heart of the capital. Several people, including the former president of the university, have been indicted.