Harvard agrees to $53 million settlement in body parts theft scandal

Harvard University said Tuesday that it had agreed to pay $53 million to settle claims that body parts that had been donated for research were stolen and sold by a former manager of the morgue at the university’s medical school.

The former manager, Cedric Lodge, 58, was sentenced to eight years in prison in December after pleading guilty to one count of interstate transportation of stolen goods. The university fired him in 2023.

Lodge had been entrusted with handling cadavers that were part of the Harvard Medical School’s Anatomical Gift Program and were supposed to be cremated after the research on them had been completed, prosecutors said.

But a sweeping federal investigation found that Lodge supplied brains, skin and other body parts to collectors in several states as part of a criminal network that i…