Crypto News: Nothing says Halloween like stolen limbs

Happy Halloween! It's Madison in New York. I've got a spooky (and shockingly true) story for you today. But first...

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Just days before Halloween, on Oct. 28, 2020, Katrina MacLean agreed to meet Cedric Lodge at the Harvard Medical School Morgue at about 1 p.m.

It wasn't to further her studies or donate the corpse of a loved one to the esteemed research institution. MacLean, a 44-year-old doll-maker from Salem, Massachusetts, was meeting Lodge after allegedly agreeing to pay him $600 for two dissected cadaver faces, according to a five-count federal indictment filed against MacLean, Lodge, Lodge's wife Denise, and others in June.

Lodge, the former morgue manager, was charged with stealing body parts as part of an alleged scheme to sell remains of people who had donated their bodies to science. Lodge allowed buyers — like MacLean — into the school's morgue to choose body parts from donated cadavers and transported heads, brains, skin, and bones to his home in New Hampshire, according to the indictment.

The cadaver faces weren't the only gruesome transactions that prosecutors say MacLean made. She stored and sold human remains at her studio in Salem, Kat's Creepy Creations, according to the indictment, and shipped human skin to another buyer with the intention of having him tan it to make leather. A month later, the buyer transferred $8,800 to MacLean via PayPal for stolen human remains, prosecutors said.

A screenshot of the Instagram page for Kat's Creepy Creations from June. The page has since been set to private. Madison Muller/Bloomberg

On an Instagram page for her store, which has since been set to private, MacLean advertised dolls with decayed faces and "human bone jewelry."

She started painting the dolls back in 2018 — the same year Lodge allegedly began selling body parts — according to her Instagram page. Soon "everyone" wanted to buy them, MacLean said in one of the posts. She sold more than 200 dolls from 2018 to 2020.

"I like to turn regular porcelain dolls into nightmare fuel," she wrote on Instagram in 2020. "I joke with my friends and say that my super power is 'the ability to to creepify.'"

That "nightmare fuel" is now a real-life horror story for the families whose loved ones' bodies ended up at the morgue. An estimated 400 cadavers may have been affected, according to a class-action lawsuit filed against Harvard and Lodge in July. Harvard has set up a webpage for the family members and next of kin of anatomical donors. It's not the first time something like this has happened — and it may not be the last time we'll hear about the grisly underground organ trade.

Last month, one of the other alleged buyers, 41-year-old Jeremy Pauley of Pennsylvania, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and interstate transportation of stolen property, the US Justice Department said. If found guilty in court, he faces up to 15 years of imprisonment, a term of supervised release following imprisonment and a fine. Lodge, his wife, and MacLean are all still pending trial.

"Some crimes defy understanding," said United States Attorney Gerard M. Karam. — Madison Muller

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But as Rina Raphael reports for Bloomberg Businessweek, more than a dozen microbiome scientists warn the startup, founded by Silicon Valley fixture Naveen Jain (of InfoSpace infamy), is "the epitome of the booming wellness industry, dangling enticing placebos in place of scientifically supported health interventions."

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