A former manager of the Harvard Medical School morgue in Boston has been sentenced to eight years in prison for stealing and selling body parts “as if they were baubles.”

Cedric Lodge was at the centre of a “ghoulish scheme”, shipping brains, skin, hands and faces to buyers in Pennsylvania and elsewhere after cadavers donated to Harvard were no longer needed for research.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Alisan Martin cited a “deeply horrifying reality” where Lodge provided skin for tanning into leather and binding into a book.

She added, “In another, Cedric and Denise Lodge sold a man’s face — perhaps to be kept on a shelf, perhaps to be used for something even more disturbing.”

His wife, Denise Lodge, received just over a year in prison for assisting him. Both appeared in federal court in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday.

Martin said Lodge, 58, of Goffstown, New Hampshire, treated the parts of “beloved human beings as if they were baubles to be sold for profit” and collected thousands of dollars from 2018 through March 2020.

After Harvard finishes using a donated body, typically returned to family or cremated, Lodge, a morgue manager for 28 years, acknowledged removing parts.

His defence attorney, Patrick Casey, called Lodge’s actions “egregious,” stating, “Mr. Lodge acknowledges the seriousness of his conduct and the harm his actions have inflicted on both the deceased persons whose bodies he callously degraded and their grieving families.”

Harvard suspended body donations for five months in 2023 when charges were filed.

Prosecutors said at least six others, including an Arkansas crematorium employee, have pleaded guilty in the body-parts trafficking investigation.