Family of another person whose remains may have been sold off by alleged Harvard Medical School grim reaper sue

The children of Margaret Flanagan of Saugus, who died of cancer in 2018, yesterday sued Harvard Medical School and former mortuary director Cedric Lodge for what may have happened to her body parts after she willed her body to the school and then died.

In their suit, filed in Suffolk Superior Court, Flanagan's children say they suffered "severe emotional distress, including nightmares, inability to sleep and flashbacks," after Harvard notified them in June that "body parts of hers may have been sold by agents, servants, and/or employees of Harvard."

They are seeking damages for what they say was negligence and negligent infliction of emotional distress by both Harvard and Lodge.

Lodge, who drove around in a Subaru with license plates reading GRIM-R, and several other people were arrested in June on federal charges they ran a parts ring in which Lodge supplied body parts - sometimes via open houses he ran at the medical-school morgue to people who like to collect human body parts.

Flanagan's children are the latest in a list of family members - including the children of a doctor trained at Harvard Medical School - who have sued over what happened to their loved ones' bodies in the time after medical-school students had used the bodies for training but before the bodies were shipped to a crematorium in Roslindale.