Man With 40 Skulls in His Apartment Linked to Nationwide Human Remains Trafficking Ring

• There’s not a shred of respect for the dead to be found among these people.

Cops often find a lot of weird things when they drop by for a visit to a suspect’s home. But nothing could’ve prepared them for what they would find in the apartment of one Kentucky man.

On July 11, FBI agents arrived at the apartment of James Nott in Mount Washington, Kentucky. When the 44-year-old opened the door, the agents asked Nott if anyone else was in the property.

“Only my dead friends,” came Nott’s chilling reply, according to CNN.

He wasn’t kidding. According to a criminal complaint, the FBI agents discovered “at least” 40 human skulls decorating Nott’s place.

The skulls had been placed all over the apartment as decorations, and Nott had even gussied some of them up. One skull allegedly had a head scarf wrapped around it.

Another one was sitting on the mattress Nott slept on, the complaint said.

Yet that wasn’t all the agents found. They also discovered other human remains, including multiple spinal cords, hip bones, and femurs.

It probably doesn’t surprise you to hear that Nott has been arrested. Yet, his arrest has nothing to do with the body parts.

Instead, the FBI has charged him with possession of a firearm as a convicted felon. Nott received his felony conviction in 2011, when he plead guilty to possessing materials to manufacture a “destructive device.”

Connected to an Older Case

But where on earth did Nott get the dozens and dozens of skulls and other human bones? The FBI discovered a clue in his place.

On top of the human remains, they found a bag belonging to the Harvard Medical School.

That discovery links Nott to a nationwide network buying and selling stolen human remains. Nott’s macabre collection is actually connected to a case we at Oddee reported on last year.

To give you a quick rundown, authorities arrested Enola, Pennsylvania resident Jeremy Pauley on August 18, 2022. They had received a tip that Pauley might’ve been selling human body parts.

And boy, was he.

At Pauley’s house, cops discovered bucketfuls of illegally acquired human organs. In addition to regular old bones, they found two brains, stretches of skin, a heart, and a pair of lungs, among many other gruesome things.

It was actually Pauley’s interactions with Nott that led the FBI to the latter. During their investigation, they discovered that the two had exchanged messages on Facebook, with Pauley intending to buy remains from Nott to sell them further.

Yet, Nott is not the one who originally acquired the parts. During interviews, Pauley informed the FBI about an entire trafficking ring for human remains, spanning all of the U.S.

And all roads of the trafficking network pointed to one Cedric Lodge.

‘Some Crimes Defy Understanding’

Lodge, from New Hampshire, used to work as a morgue manager at Harvard Medical School. For understandable reasons, he was fired from his role this May.

Between 2018 and 2022, Lodge routinely stole body parts from cadavers donated to the school for medical research and education. He would then sell them with the assistance of his wife, Denise Lodge.

Although most of the illicit sales happened online, Lodge also reportedly entertained his twisted customers face to face. He’s accused of taking two buyers — Katrina Maclean of Massachusetts and Joshua Taylor of Pennsylvania — into the morgue so they could choose which parts to buy from which corpses.

That’s one sickening shopping trip.

Lodge’s customers would typically resell the body parts online to people like Pauley and Nott. Whether they did anything else with the parts, we don’t know — and in all honesty, we don’t want to know.

In total, the members of the network exchanged more than $100,000 over the years.

Fortunately, the entire cadaver trafficking ring — or at least the parts the authorities are aware of — is facing justice. Lodge and his wife, Maclean, Taylor, and one Mathew Lampi from Minnesota, were all indicted on conspiracy and interstate transport of stolen goods in June.

“Some crimes defy understanding,” said U.S. Attorney Gerard M. Karam about the charges.

“It is particularly egregious that so many of the victims here volunteered to allow their remains to be used to educate medical professionals and advance the interests of science and healing. The theft and trafficking of human remains strikes at the very essence of what makes us human.”