From Fox News: A Pennsylvania man is facing hundreds of charges after “over 100 full or partial sets of human and skeletal remains” were allegedly found in his home and a storage unit in a scene a district attorney described as a “horror movie come to life.”
Jonathan Gerlach, 34, of Ephrata, Pa., was arrested this week by police who were investigating a string of burglarized graves and mausoleums at the Mount Moriah Cemetery on the outskirts of Philadelphia, according to the Delaware County District Attorney’s Office.
The Delaware County District Attorney’s Office said around 8 p.m. on Tuesday, police were conducting surveillance of Mount Moriah Cemetery “when they observed the suspect’s car with numerous bones and skulls in plain view in the back seat of the vehicle.”
“Gerlach was then seen exiting the cemetery holding a burlap bag, crowbar and other assorted items. The offender was brought into custody where he admitted to stealing approximately 30 sets of human remains,” the DA’s office said.
“Through investigation it is believed that over 100 full or partial sets of human and skeletal remains have been recovered from Gerlach’s home and storage unit in Ephrata. This investigation remains ongoing,” it added.
They had been alerted t0 Gerlach after a tipster told police that someone who’d been in Gerlach’s home saw a “partially decomposed corpse” hanging in his basement. They thought it could be connected to the robbery at the Luzerne County mausoleum.
Detectives searched Gerlach’s social media and found an Instagram account that was following “an abundance of accounts referencing skeleton collecting, corpses, taxidermy, ‘human skull store,’ oddities, and bone museums.”
They also found a Facebook group called “Human Bones and Skull selling group.” In it, someone thanked Gerlach for a “human skin bag.”
Gerlach admitted to detectives “that he sold some remains on-line but that the vast majority of them were in the basement of his current residence,” the search warrant states.
District Attorney Tanner Rouse provided additional details.
“Detectives walked into a horror movie come to life,” Rouse said. “This is an unbelievable scene that no one involved, from myself, to the detectives to the medical examiners that are now trying to piece together what they are looking at — quite literally — none of them have ever seen anything like this before.”
“Detectives have recovered an awful lot of bones at this point, and we are still trying to piece together who they are, where they are from, and how many we are looking at, and it’s going to be quite some time before we have a final answer,” Rouse added.
On Wednesday, Jan. 7, detectives seized the following items from Gerlach’s home:
- Over 100 human skulls
- Numerous human long bones
- Mummified human feet and hands
- Two decomposing human torsos
- Other assorted skeletal items
On Jan. 8, detectives gained access to Gerlach’s storage locker, where they retrieved the following items:
- Eight human corpses
- Miscellaneous body parts
- Ashes
- Older jewelry that may have been removed from graves
The remains included those of months-old infants, and even some that were hundreds of years old.
A local man making headlines for allegedly housing over one hundred stolen human remains at his Ephrata home also admitted to selling some of them online, according to search warrants obtained by CBS 21.
READ MORE: https://t.co/LgLyDnqc72 pic.twitter.com/ZtyH4omtH8
— CBS 21 News (@CBS21NEWS) January 9, 2026
Read more at Fox News
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