Jonathan Gerlach, a 34-year-old Pennsylvania man, was arrested on Tuesday after vandalizing a cemetery — only later did police discover human remains in his basement and storage unit, including more than 100 skulls, several long bones, mummified feet, and decomposing torsos.
The arrest follows a months-long investigation of burglaries at graves and mausoleums. From November 7 to early January, 26 underground vaults and mausoleums were broken into or damaged, according to a probable cause affidavit.
Surveillance footage from Mount Moriah Cemetery on January 6 shows the suspect’s car with “numerous bones and skulls in plain view in the back seat,” Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse said. From there, police observed Gerlach leaving the cemetery with a crowbar and a burlap bag filled with the skeletal remains of two small children, skulls, and other bones. He was taken into custody and, according to police, confessed to stealing roughly 30 sets of human remains. Authorities say a Monster drink was also found nearby and was later processed for DNA and fingerprints.
It is still unclear what Gerlach was doing with the bones, Rouse noted, some of which were more than a century old.
“Very simply, 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 said.
He called the sight “horrific,” adding, “Detectives walked into a horror movie come to life in that home.”
Yeadon Borough Police Chief Henry Giammarco also said it was one of the worst things he had witnessed in his 30-year career. “When people are laid to rest, that’s important,” he added. “The remains, they’re so old, but still, when they lived, they had a life, they mattered. It was important to us to get justice, and that’s working with the DA’s office. Hopefully justice will be served.”
Gerlach is charged with more than 300 counts, including 100 counts each of abuse of a corpse and receiving stolen property, multiple counts of desecrating a public monument, desecrating a venerated object, desecrating a historic burial place, burglary, trespassing, and theft. He is also accused of stealing jewelry, possibly taken from human remains.
He is jailed on a $1 million bond with no lawyer listed in court records, and an arraignment hearing is scheduled for January 20.
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