SALEM — The way Katrina Maclean tells it, her foray into curating creepy art and collectibles began with dolls. The “human stuff” came later.
Maclean, 44, who lives in Salem, is facing federal charges in a case out of Pennsylvania, where she is accused of selling body parts stolen from cadavers held in the Harvard Medical School morgue.
In 2021, she was interviewed for a podcast where she talked about growing up on the North Shore and starting a business dealing in oddities and the macabre.
“Doing the oddities market, I started to have access to all this other [expletive] that I didn’t know I could [have] access to, like bones and stuff,” she tells the host of the “YeahDat Podcast” published online Oct. 30, 2021. “So I kind of branched out and started making skull plaques and, you know, just creepy, cool stuff.”
Maclean, who could not be reached for comment Thursday, owns Kat’s Creepy Creations in Peabody and curates Freaks Antiques & Uniques, a “Dark Art market featuring 40-80 vendors” held in Salem, according to its Facebook page, which was shut down Thursday afternoon.
Prosecutors say Maclean gained access to the cadavers through the former manager of the Harvard Medical School morgue, Cedric Lodge, who is at the center of the investigation into a sprawling conspiracy to steal and sell human body parts, according to court records. The parts were from bodies that had been donated to the medical school’s Anatomical Gift Program and were supposed to be cremated.
Lodge, 55, of Goffstown, N.H., and his wife, Denise Lodge, 63, were indicted on conspiracy and interstate transportation of stolen goods charges in Pennsylvania and appeared in federal court in New Hampshire on Wednesday. Maclean was indicted on the same charges and appeared in federal court in Boston. Three other defendants also face charges in Pennsylvania, and another one was previously indicted in Arkansas, authorities said.
In the indictment, prosecutors say Lodge allowed Maclean and others “to enter the morgue and choose what remains to purchase.”
Maclean allegedly sold and shipped the remains to buyers in multiple states. She also stored and sold remains from her Peabody shop, prosecutors allege. FBI agents searched her store and her Salem home in March as part of the investigation.
During her interview on the 2021 podcast, Maclean said she grew up in Revere. As a kid, she was passionate about drawing and thought she’d one day attend art school, she said. But she opted for a trade instead and began a career in heating and plumbing.
The need for a creative outlet, however, nagged at Maclean, who said she grew up loving horror movies. She turned to tattooing, but that was short-lived. Her work with dolls, for which she would become known, started when she was working for Witch City Consignment & Thrift in Salem. While decorating the windows for Halloween, Maclean said, she got the idea to paint the dolls to give them a scary look.
The dolls were a hit, and Maclean began making and selling them on her own. As her business grew, she began to obtain human bones and skulls, she said in the podcast. She also has her own collection of “hardcore oddities . . . like human stuff,” she said, but did not describe them.
Before her social media accounts closed this week, posts on her store’s Instagram page showed some of the items she crafted using what she said were human remains. A post from February 2020 showed a doll painted like an evil clown with bloody hands. Sitting in front of the doll was a skull with several teeth.
“This doll has been sold, and yes that is a real human skull,” the post read. “If you’re in the market for human bones, hit me up!”
Another post from December 2019 featured two display boxes containing numerous bones described in the post as “real human vertebrae.”
A year earlier, in November 2018, Maclean posted an image of one of her skull plaques. The top of the skull had been removed and replaced with a collection of dried pink flowers. Brass gears in variety of sizes were screwed into the jawbone, eye sockets, and other parts of the skull, which was mounted on a plaque and appeared to be hanging on a door. The description read, “Steampunk Human Skull with dried flowers.”
According to the indictment, Maclean shipped human skin to Jeremy Pauley, 41, of Bloomsburg, Pa., in the summer of 2021 after she had “engaged his service to tan the skin to create leather.” Maclean allegedly agreed to pay Pauley with human skin in lieu of money. She sent a message to Lodge asking about obtaining skin to pay “the dude I sent the chest piece to tan.”
Pauley, who was also indicted in the case, shipped the tanned skin back that August from Pennsylvania to Maclean in Massachusetts, and Maclean shipped him the human skin for payment in September, according to the indictment.
Owners of other shops that deal in macabre keepsakes were reluctant to talk on the record about the case Thursday. The news seemed to have sent a chill through the niche community.
“Everyone’s freaked out,” said a person who answered the phone at one of those stores and asked not to be identified. The situation was causing “a lot of headaches right now” among artists and merchants in the community, the person said.
Those who had met Maclean in the obscure oddities circuit, including at semiannual markets she organized, had fond words to share about her.
“Only thing I can tell you is Kat is a wonderful person — an amazing person,” said Lauren Mandell, who sells jewelry via an online store called Truly Outrageous Jewels, and described MacLean as a friend. “We care for her dearly.”
At Witch City Consignment & Thrift on Thursday, the owner said Maclean is no longer associated with the shop and declined to comment.
A knock at Maclean’s door in Salem on Thursday went unanswered.
Other business owners in the converted mill at 58 Pulaski St. in Peabody where Maclean’s shop is located recalled watching federal agents conduct their search in March.
Shannon Aaron, 60, runs Modhaus, a furniture store in the building.
“They just took down the signage this past week,” Aaron said of Maclean’s store. “I thought of her as an artist. Not my type, but there was definitely a market for it in Salem.”
Steve Annear of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Clarification: This story was updated to reflect that the Lodges, Maclean, and Pauley all face charges in Pennsylvania.
Nick Stoico can be reached at nick.stoico@globe.com. Spencer Buell can be reached at spencer.buell@globe.com. Follow him @SpencerBuell. Elllie Wolfe can be reached at ellie.wolfe@globe.com. Follow her @elliew0lfe.