Harvard to pay $53 million after former morgue manager sold body parts on black market

Harvard Medical School says it agreed to pay $53 million to settle class action lawsuits by relatives of body donors whose remains were sold on the black market by its former morgue manager.

Harvard Medical School Deans George Q.

Daley and Bernard S.

Chang announced the development in a letter to the community on Tuesday, calling the actions of former morgue manager Cedric Lodge “despicable, abhorrent, and a flagrant betrayal of our values as a medical community.” Pending court approval, Harvard said that two class action settlement funds totaling $53 million will be established to resolve the lawsuits.

A Harvard Medical School spokesperson on Thursday referred to the letter when asked for comment and said they had no additional information to share.

The lawsuits were brought by 47 relatives of people whose remains were potentially mishandled and sold.

The remains were donated for research and education.

Harvard has said it cannot determine precisely which donors’ remains Lodge stole.

After he was charged in 2023, the school said it reviewed information from federal investigators along with records showing when donors’ remains were sent for cremation and when Lodge was on campus to determine which donors may have been affected.

The settlement covers relatives or designees of people who donated their remains to Harvard Medical School between Jan.

1, 2018, and March 31, 2023.

Last year, Lodge was sentenced to eight years in prison for stealing and selling body parts “as if they were baubles.” Authorities said Lodge was at the center of a ghoulish scheme in which he shipped brains, skin, hands and faces from cadavers to buyers in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

His wife, Denise Lodge, was sentenced to just over a year in prison for assisting him.

Six other people who bought remains from Cedric Lodge also pleaded guilty and have been sentenced, according to Harvard.