It sounds like a scene from Texas Chainsaw Massacre or the third season of Monster. But police accused a man of stealing more than 100 bodies from a historic cemetery.
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They found skeletons in the back of a car near a cemetery in Philadelphia. From there, police located a man’s residence and found a basement filled with various body parts. Police are accusing the man of stealing 100 bodies from the cemetery.
This comes after more than 26 mausoleums and vaults were robbed starting last November. Authorities believe 34-year-old Jonathan Christ Gerlach is to blame. They reportedly found more than 100 human skulls, mummified hands and feet, decomposing torsos, and other bones at his residence.
Cemetery Robbery
He’s accused of stealing these body parts from Mount Moriah Cemetery.
“They were in various states. Some of them were hanging, as it were. Some of them were pieced together, some were just skulls on a shelf,” Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse said.
They also found jewelry stolen from the graves as well as a pacemaker still attached. Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery thanked police for the arrest. The cemetery traces its roots back to 1855. It’s the largest abandoned burial ground in the country with 150,000 graves.
Police arrested Gerlach while carrying a crowbar and a burlap bag. Inside the bag was the mummified remains of two children as well as other bones. Allegedly, Gerlach showed investigators which graves he stole from and the bodies.
“Given the enormity of what we are looking at and the sheer, utter lack of reasonable explanation, it’s difficult to say right now, at this juncture, exactly what took place. We’re trying to figure it out,” Rouse also told reporters.
They charged him with 100 counts each of abuse of a corpse and receiving stolen property, among other counts. He’s in jail on a $1 million bond.