A federal grand jury indictment returned Tuesday in Pennsylvania alleges that the couple, who live in Goffstown, N.H., conspired with others as part of a yearslong nationwide network that illegally bought and sold organs and cadaver pieces pilfered from Harvard Medical School and a mortuary in Arkansas. (Source: Boston Globe)
They've been vending items like heads, brains, skin, and bones for four years.
Salem's Katrina Maclean has also been arrested. The owner of Kat's Creepy Creations, which specializes in the macabre, as pictured here. Maclean allegedly went shopping at Harvard Med, where she got to pick out the remains she was interested in. Things like faces - she paid the Lodges $600 for a couple of them - and plain old skin.
She allegedly shipped human skin to 46-year-old Joshua Taylor of West Lawn, Pa., to have him “tan the skin to create leather,” the indictment says. Maclean then allegedly used human skin in lieu of monetary payment for Taylor’s services.
Human skin leather? Shades of lampshades from Auschwitz. How utterly disgusting. How utterly depraved to participate in such a scheme. (What were the services Maclean paid Taylor for? Apparently, he sent her the human leather, but got to keep some of the skin as compensation.)
Maclean sounds like a true prize.
In a post on Feb. 9, 2020, during the time MacLean was believed by officials to be receiving and selling human body parts from Lodge, the Salem woman posted an image of a reworked, “killer clown”-style doll with a skull between its fingers.
The caption on her post read, “Throwback to the set of Hubie Halloween. This doll has been sold and yes that is a real human skull. If you’re in the market for human bones hit me up!” (Source: MassLive)
But wait, there's more in this multi-state festival of the grotesque.
Jeremy Pauley, 41, of Bloomsburg, Pa., is accused of purchasing remains that had originated at Harvard Medical School and at a mortuary in Little Rock, Ark., where another defendant, Candace Chapman Scott, was employed. Authorities also accuse 52-year-old Mathew Lampi of East Bethel, Minn., in relation to the alleged conspiracy.
Whatever Pauley and Lampi were doing, $100K exchanged hands over the four years the scheme ran. There were also PayPal transactions between and among those charged that ran into the tens of thousands.
Scott, the Arkansas morgue employee, sold "the corpses of two stillborn babies who were supposed to be remated and returned as cremains to their families, authorities said."
Oh.
Meanwhile, those who donated the bodies of loved ones to Harvard Medical School for research and teaching purposes, are wondering just where those remains are. (At one point, I had an HMS donor card, as did my husband, but that was a long time ago. When Jim died, I will admit it didn't occur to me to donate his body. He wanted to be cremated, and I wanted the ashes to bury and spread. As for me, maybe I'll look in to being a donor. Who doesn't want to get accepted to the prestigious Harvard Medical School?)
The prestigious Harvard Medical School is, of course, appalled. In an email response to this appalling situation, Deans George Q. Daley and Edward M Hundert wrote:
“The reported incidents are a betrayal of HMS and, most importantly, each of the individuals who altruistically chose to will their bodies to HMS through the Anatomical Gift Program to advance medical education and research.”
The deans also noted that they believe the Cedric Lodge was the only Harvard employee involved. Which is I'm sure a big relief.
As for the Lodges, Maclean, Pauley, Taylor, et al. What a bunch of ghouls. They're all facing some pretty serious sentences. Maybe next time they'll take up a more normal - and legal - side hustle.
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