Dec 23, 2025 · 38 min · 17 segments
In this update episode of Postmortem, reporter Ally Jarmanning updates us on the criminal cases against Harvard Medical School's former morgue manager Cedric Lodge, his wife Denise, and Jeremy Pauley…
And when it comes to Harvard, The prosecution says he may have not bought directly from Cedric Lodge, but he bought from people who bought from Cedric Lodge and that he was aware that these things were coming from Harvard.
yeah, it really comes down to whether you buy the claim that he thought these body parts were just going to be incinerated, were just going to be destroyed anyway.
So at one point, so in these Facebook messages back and forth between Scott, the woman at the mortuary in Arkansas, and Polly, she messaged him, I know this is a true oddball question, but we get stillbirths all the time and basically give the parents a pinch of ashes back from a whole person we cremated.
Do you collect fetuses? And he said, OMG, they are my favorite things in the world.
Most are special in some way, but I restore them and give them great homes.
And then he says, anything fetal or infant is my personal favorite in collecting.
And what little time they had, they had peace, which we all spend our lives after birth trying to find.
So he has a very different view about what he was doing versus what, say, the mother was.
Yeah, and it really highlights for me just how differently we all think about the body after death.
You know, to some people, like, the body is just a container of sorts, and other people would think that that is sacrilege, that, you know, the body is this... was this holy structure that carried us through life, and the body should be, you know...
In a way, in a very particular way that looks different from person to person.
And when it comes to Harvard, The prosecution says he may have not bought directly from Cedric Lodge, but he bought from people who bought from Cedric Lodge and that he was aware that these things were coming from Harvard.
yeah, it really comes down to whether you buy the claim that he thought these body parts were just going to be incinerated, were just going to be destroyed anyway.
So at one point, so in these Facebook messages back and forth between Scott, the woman at the mortuary in Arkansas, and Polly, she messaged him, I know this is a true oddball question, but we get stillbirths all the time and basically give the parents a pinch of ashes back from a whole person we cremated.
Do you collect fetuses? And he said, OMG, they are my favorite things in the world.
Most are special in some way, but I restore them and give them great homes.
And then he says, anything fetal or infant is my personal favorite in collecting.
And what little time they had, they had peace, which we all spend our lives after birth trying to find.
So he has a very different view about what he was doing versus what, say, the mother was.
Yeah, and it really highlights for me just how differently we all think about the body after death.
You know, to some people, like, the body is just a container of sorts, and other people would think that that is sacrilege, that, you know, the body is this... was this holy structure that carried us through life, and the body should be, you know...
In a way, in a very particular way that looks different from person to person.
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