Harvard to Pay $53M to Families After Donated Body Parts Were Sold on Black Market

A years-long legal fight over Harvard University’s medical school morgue has come to a close — and it’s costing the school millions of dollars.

According to a report by the New York Post published on Wednesday, August 19, a Boston judge signed off Tuesday on a preliminary $53 million settlement between Harvard and dozens of families whose donated remains fueled an employee’s illegal side business. The payout will be split between two settlement funds, per NBC Boston.

That employee, former Harvard Medical School morgue manager Cedric Lodge, was arrested in 2023 and pleaded guilty last year to interstate transport of stolen human remains, per the outlet, which reported he was sentenced in December 2025 to eight years in prison.

The scheme ran from 2018 through August 2022, with Cedric pocketing organs and body parts — “heads, faces, brains, skin and hands,” per the New York Post report — and carting them to his home in Goffstown, New Hampshire, where he and wife Denise Lodge arranged sales to buyers in Pennsylvania. Denise received just over a year in prison for her role.

Six other buyers with no Harvard ties were also indicted and sentenced, NBC Boston reported and added that a judge initially dismissed the lawsuit in February 2024, ruling Harvard was immune from liability because it had acted in good faith.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court revived the case in October 2025, finding the school may have subjected donated remains to “horrific and undignified treatment,” per the New York Post. Assistant U.S. Attorney Alisan Martin said in a court filing that one buyer received skin tanned into leather and made into a book — a “deeply horrifying reality.”

Harvard brought in a panel of three outside experts to review its donor program and has since adopted their recommendations, according to NBC Boston.

Deans George Daley and Bernard Chang called Cedric’s conduct “despicable, abhorrent, and a flagrant betrayal of our values as a medical community” in a letter to the school community, the New York Post reported.

Beyond the payout, Harvard must hold a webinar confirming Cedric’s crimes were “morally reprehensible,” and will launch an annual scholarship for medical students in the 2027-2028 academic year, per the outlet.

“We hope that this resolution ensures that this never happens to another family ever again,” attorney John Morgan, whose firm represented the families, said in a statement, per the report.