In a case that has sent ripples through the academic and medical communities, Denise Lodge, the wife of a former Harvard Medical School morgue manager, admitted on Friday to her role in a macabre plot involving the transportation of stolen human remains. The 64-year-old from Goffstown, New Hampshire, entered a guilty plea to a federal charge of interstate transportation of stolen goods in U.S. District Court in the Middle District of Pennsylvania. According to court documents, this plea relates directly to her shipping of body parts, including hands and heads, to various buyers across the country.

Shipped between 2018 and March 2020, the stolen items included not only hands and feet, but also portions of skulls, dissected human faces, and spines, with 24 hands and nine spines among them, as reported by NBC Boston. Denise Lodge's legal representative, Hope Lefeber, offered an explanation, stating in an interview with WBUR that her client's husband "was doing this and she just kind of went along with it."

Denise was not alone in her legal troubles. Charged alongside her was Cedric Lodge, her husband and the former morgue manager at Harvard, and a group that extended beyond Massachusetts to include buyers and sellers in a nationwide network handling these illicit materials, as MassLive has noted. One of those involved, a Pennsylvania man named Jeremy Pauley who pleaded guilty to related charges last year, is awaiting sentencing for his participation in the conspiracy.

In defense of Lodge, Lefeber stated to WBUR, "What happened here is wrong," reflecting on the nature of the offense as more than a mere monetary transgression, saying it was "more of a moral and ethical dilemma ... than a criminal case," as reported by NBC Boston. Meant for educational or research purposes, the remainders of donated bodies are normally cremated, and the ashes are returned to the donors' families or laid to rest in a cemetery, making the breach of trust and the sanctity of these donations particularly egregious. It remains to be seen how this crime will affect the practices and policies surrounding anatomical donations and their use in institutions of such high esteem as Harvard.