Investigators have arrested and charged a Pennsylvania man accused of ransacking a southwest Philadelphia cemetery of human skeletal remains, authorities said Thursday.
Jonathan Gerlach, 34, of Ephrata, Pa., was arrested Tuesday night at Mount Moriah Cemetery, the Delaware County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement.
Police were conducting surveillance of the cemetery following reports that it had been burglarized since November.
Officers observed the suspect’s car with numerous bones and skulls in plain view in the back seat at around 8 p.m. The suspect was then observed exiting the cemetery with a burlap bag, crowbar and other items, and was then taken into police custody.
Under questioning, Gerlach allegedly admitted to investigators that he had stolen about 30 sets of human remains.
A subsequent search warrant of his residence recovered what investigators believe to be more than 100 full and partial human skeletons. An additional eight human skeletons were found in a separate storage locker in Gerlach’s name, Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse told reporters during a Thursday press conference.
“Very simply, detectives have recovered an awful lot of hones at this point, and we are still trying to 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,” he said.
“He’s now arrested.”
Gerlach has been charged with nearly 500 offenses, including 26 counts of burglary, 100 counts of abuse of corpse, 100 counts of theft by unlawful taking and more than four dozen counts of intentional desecration, among others.
Rouse said the sting operation was launched after more than two dozen mausoleums and graves were “desecrated” at the cemetery in the past few months.
Officers laid in wait and eventually “and caught Mr. Gerlach as he desecrated yet another monument.”
“Very simply, detectives walked into a horror movie come to life the other night,” he said.
“Guys, 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.”
Rouse described the alleged crime as being “horrific,” saying that they found among the remains those they believe to belong to children, some as young asa months-old. Some of the remains were also hundreds of years old, he added.
He added that they are “almost certain” that the remains they recovered also came from other cemeteries.
They were found mostly in the suspect’s basement, he said. Some were hanging. Some were skulls on a shelf. He said they do not know what he was doing with them.
“We are trying to figure out exactly what went on in that home,” he said. “It is still unclear, and given the enormity of what we are looking at and the sheer kind of utter lack of reasonable explanation, it is difficult to say right now at this juncture exactly what’s in place. We’re trying to figure it out.”
Rouse did confirm to reporters that part of the investigation is a Facebook group that is seemingly a marketplace for selling human bones.
More charges are possible, he said.
Gerlach is being held on a $1 million bond.
The suspect has a preliminary hearing scheduled for Jan. 20.
