A Pennsylvania man who pleaded guilty last week in federal court admitted to buying stolen body parts from an Arkansas woman as well as from individuals in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania in an investigation that has so far snared seven people in four states stretching from New England to Arkansas and sparked a class-action lawsuit in Massachusetts.
Last week, the U.S. Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced that federal charges were filed against six people, including the manager of the Harvard Medical School morgue and his wife, a doll store owner in Massachusetts and a Minnesota tattoo artist. Last April, in Arkansas, Candace Chapman Scott, 36, of Little Rock, was indicted on federal charges of mail and wire fraud and interstate transportation of stolen property.
All of the defendants appear to be connected through a Bloomsburg, Pa., man, 41-year-old Jeremy Pauley, a self-described "blood artist" and "oddities collector" who pleaded guilty last week to an information charging him with conspiracy and interstate transportation of stolen property. Pauley admitted to purchasing body parts from Scott and from Katrina MacLean, 44, of Salem, Mass., and from Joshua Taylor, 46, of West Lawn, Pa.
MacLean and Taylor are accused of purchasing body parts from Cedric Lodge, 55, and his wife, Denise, 63, both of Goffstown, N.H. Lodge is the former manager of the Harvard Medical School morgue, which is believed to have been the source of the body parts MacLean and Taylor are accused to selling to Pauley.
A Minnesota tattoo artist, 52-year-old Mathew Lampi of East Bethel, was also named in the Pennsylvania indictment, alleged to have been a customer of Pauley's.
Scott is a former employee of Arkansas Mortuary Services, which, at the time of her arrest, had a contract with the UAMS Medical School to cremate research cadavers used in the education of medical students.
Leslie Taylor, a spokeswoman for UAMS, said the UAMS Anatomical Gift Program is a vital part of the education of medical students. She said medical cadavers typically stay in the program for two to three years, after which the remains are returned to the families upon request or they are cremated and buried.
"Our medical students, our nursing students and our other medical professions students consider these people to be partners in their education," Taylor said. "So, they are very, very respectful of these donors when they're working with them and they even have a memorial service at the end of the year for those that are leaving the program."
The news that began unfolding with the indictment and arrest of Scott in Arkansas, Taylor said, stunned the UAMS community.
"We were just, you know," Taylor began, "We really couldn't have imagined that a crime like this would happen. It's just unimaginable. It's appalling. Who would think something like this would be going on?"
In Boston, according to an Associated Press report, on Friday, the son of a woman whose body was donated to Harvard Medical School for research purposes filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all families who believe their loved ones' body parts were mishandled by the school's former morgue manager.
The lawsuit filed in Suffolk Superior Court said the class could include the families of up to 400 donated cadavers. It alleges negligence, breach of duty and infliction of emotional distress.
Before Adele Mazzone died in February 2019, she arranged to donate her body to the medical school for research, according to the lawsuit. Her ashes were returned to her family in April 2021, but her son, John Bozek, of Tewksbury, Mass., thinks that his mother's body was one of those desecrated at the morgue.
A Harvard spokesperson told The Associated Press via email that the university had no comment on the lawsuit.
Although Arkansas law prescribes penalties -- up to a maximum of five years in prison and a $50,000 fine -- for privately trading in anatomical gifts intended for transplantation or therapy, and federal law itself is largely silent on the the sale of body parts other than organs intended for transplant, other federal statutes may be applied that have far greater penalties than individual states may bring to bear.
Arkansas law -- Arkansas Code Annotated § 20-17-12, titled the "Revised Arkansas Anatomical Gift Act" -- covers how anatomical donations are handled in the state. According to A.C.A. § 12-17-1211(a)(1), the legal recipients of anatomical gifts include: a hospital; accredited medical school, dental school, college, or university; organ procurement organization; or other appropriate person, for research or education. Under A.C.A. § 12-17-1216, the sale or purchase of body parts is prohibited under state law with the exception that a "person may charge a reasonable amount for the removal, processing, preservation, quality control, storage, transportation, implantation, or disposal of a part."
The federal cases in Arkansas and in Pennsylvania hinge on the interstate transportation of body parts that were stolen from research hospitals and not the trafficking of the body parts themselves. All of the defendants in the Pennsylvania case are charged in one form or another with conspiracy and with interstate transport of stolen property and face up to 15 years in prison if convicted. In Arkansas, Scott was charged by a federal grand jury with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud, commission of mail and wire fraud, conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property and interstate transportation of stolen property. If convicted, she faces as much as 35 years in prison.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Jegley, lead attorney prosecuting the Scott case, said court proceedings in that case will be on hold until completion of a mental evaluation, which was ordered last month by a magistrate judge. A jury trial is currently scheduled for Oct. 30 but likely will be continued beyond that date.
"After the evaluation, a hearing will be set," Jegley said. "I imagine there will be a competency hearing and then probably a detention hearing of some sort and then the case will proceed like normal. ... A lot of things have to happen between plea and arraignment and the resolution of the case."
There have been a few federal prosecutions in recent years of similar cases but even so such cases are rare enough to catch federal attorneys off guard.
In 2018, a Detroit man, Arthur Rathburn, was sentenced to nine years in federal prison for selling diseased body parts to medical educators. Rathburn was charged with fraud and violations of federal hazardous materials shipping laws.
Last January, Megan Hess and Shirley Koch, operators of a Montrose, Colo., funeral home, were sentenced to 20 years and 15 years in prison, respectively, after pleading guilty to federal mail fraud violations. The two admitted to stealing bodies and body parts over an eight-year period and selling them to body brokers.
"I had no idea this went on until we got this case," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Gordon, who is assisting Jegley on the Scott prosecution. "Though with Facebook and social media it's probably easier to do nowadays and probably more pervasive."