‘Grim Reaper’: Harvard Medical School faces 2 more lawsuits over alleged human body parts trafficking ring

One of two new lawsuits filed against Harvard in the wake of bombshell allegations a morgue employee was stealing and selling body parts donated to the university’s medical school reveals the employee may have identified as the “Grim Reaper.”

The U.S. Attorney’s office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced on June 14 an alleged “nationwide network of individuals bought and sold human remains stolen from Harvard Medical School and an Arkansas mortuary,” which implicated HMS morgue employee Cedric Lodge, 55, of Goffstown, N.H., and four others, including his wife, Denise Lodge, 63.

“This ghoulish black market was allowed to flourish in plain sight by an HMS morgue employee whose lack of respect for the dead was obvious to anyone who scrutinized his behavior; it is alleged that he drove to work each day and presumably parked in the HMS parking lot with a license plate identifying him as the ‘GRIM-R’ — as in, the grim reaper,” a new lawsuit targeting the university filed at the end of day Thursday in Suffolk Superior Court in Boston states.

“The Grim Reaper posted images of himself dressed up in the garb of the undertaker in a Dickens novel with a black hat and overcoat,” it continues. “His license plate and open association with macabre hobbies revealed his view of his job at the morgue as a backdrop for his fantasies instead of a place of reverence and respect.”

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a Deerfield woman named Anne Weiss, “individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated” against Harvard as well as the Harvard Medical Center. The complaint states that Weiss is one of three surviving daughters of Dr. William and Mrs. Nancy Buchanan of Greenfield. William Buchanan made arrangements to donate his body to the medical school — the pediatrician’s alma mater — prior to his death at 90 in 2018.

“We look forward to litigating this case on behalf of our client, whose father’s remains were entrusted to Harvard Medical School to further medical education. This was consistent with his life as a dedicated pediatrician,” attorneys Joe Sauder of Sauder Schelkopf and Bryan Lentz of Bochetto & Lentz said in a statement to the Herald. “Harvard Medical School failed him, his family, and everyone impacted by these horrific acts.”

The suit joins one filed two days after news of the alleged body part trafficking ring by the Bridgewater-based Keches Law Group on behalf of Tewksbury’s John Bozek, the son of Adele Mazzone, who had donated her body to HMS’ Anatomical Gifts Program and whose body plaintiff believes to have been one of the up to 400 or so donated to be sold piecemeal.

On Friday, a third lawsuit seeking class-action status was filed in federal court in Boston, with similar claims and demands, this time representing Robert Johnson, of Bradford, the son of a woman named Anne Weaver, who like Mazzone and Buchanan, had donated her body to the Anatomical Gift Program. The plaintiff is represented by attorneys with the Salem-based Mazow McCullough PC.

“Upon information and belief, Anne Weaver’s remains were one of the many donated cadavers mishandled and desecrated by Defendant Lodge as referenced throughout this complaint,” the document states, adding its own estimate of 350–400 affected cadavers in the grim undertaking.

Harvard has previously said to the Herald that it “does not comment on pending litigation.” The Weiss lawsuit does not list Lodge individually as a defendant as the other two do, which each define him as a “morgue manager.” Harvard has disputed this job title and has repeatedly defined him as an Anatomical Gifts Program employee working in its morgue who had no supervisory duties.

Both lawsuits level claims against the university or Lodge or both. Across the lawsuits, complaint counts include negligence, reckless infliction of emotional distress, unjust enrichment, breach of contract, and “respondeat superior.”

That last one is a legal doctrine which the Cornell Wex law dictionary says “holds an employer or principal legally responsible for the wrongful acts of an employee or agent, if such acts occur within the scope of the employment or agency.”