Authorities said that Candace Chapman Scott stole human remains and sold these to Jeremy Pauley, pictured here. (Mugshot: Cumberland County District Attorney’s Office)
A Pennsylvania judge sentenced a man to two years of probation in connection to a wide-ranging cadaver-stealing scandal that implicated the morgue manager for Harvard Medical School.
Jeremy Pauley did not speak in a Cumberland County court on Tuesday — he still faces a related case in federal court, to which he has pleaded guilty. Authorities have yet to schedule the sentencing hearing in that matter.
The attorney for Pauley told the judge that Pauley was an “expert” in skeletons and would teach people. Pauley did not say anything because of the pending federal charges.
— Tyler Jeski (@producerTJeski) March 5, 2024
Pauley did not speak on his behalf, according to Tyler Jeski, an executive producer for Harrisburg CBS affiliate WHP. His defense lawyer reportedly described him in court as an “expert” in skeletons.
State authorities charged Pauley in 2022, saying that he purchased stolen body parts. The seller was Candace Chapman Scott, who stole the remains from a mortuary in Little Rock, Arkansas, they said.
Cumberland County prosecutors said officers got a complaint on June 14, 2022, of possible human body parts sold on Facebook. Then, on July 8 of that year, a person called cops out to a home on North Enola Drive regarding possible human remains.
“The caller reported finding possible human remains in the basement of the residence contained inside of several 5-gallon buckets,” authorities wrote.
That person described finding “human organs” and “human skins” inside the buckets, prosecutors said. Detectives, forensic investigators, and the coroner’s office executed a search warrant to indeed find three 5-gallon buckets containing human remains, according to the DA’s office.
“Among the remains identified were human brains, heart, livers, skin and lungs,” prosecutors wrote.
“This is one of the most bizarre investigations I have encountered in my thirty-three years as a prosecutor,” Cumberland County District Attorney Seán M. McCormack said in 2022. “Just when I think I have seen it all, a case like this comes around.”
The allegations would only get a lot more complicated. Federal authorities in 2023 charged Cedric Lodge, the former manager at Harvard’s morgue, with secretly using his position to traffic in all manner of human remains.
Defendants included his wife, Denise Lodge. For example, Denise allegedly communicated with a person identified in documents only as “Individual 1,” a resident of Montgomery, Pennsylvania. She agreed to sell him the remains that her husband stole from Harvard, according to documents. She shipped the cadaver parts to Montgomery, prosecutors said.
A man who allegedly crossed paths with Pauley, Kentucky resident James Nott, was federally charged later in the summer.
“On May 27, 2022, NOTT using the Facebook username ‘William Burke’ sent Pauley photos and videos of skulls for sale via Facebook,” authorities wrote.
“These will be here soon,” Nott wrote, according to the FBI. “Not claimed yet.”
“Yeah some of these prices are f—— garbage out there,” Pauley wrote, according to the affidavit. “I don’t mind paying up a little for shop stock. Makes things look good. How much total for the couple and the last video you sent plus the spines?”
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