Jonathan Gerlach (34) is a Pennsylvanian man suspected of stealing greater than 100 items of human stays from a cemetery. He has admitted to promoting the stays on-line.
Police started an investigation in 2025, following a sequence of break-ins at Mount Moriah Cemetery in Pennsylvania.
Mount Moriah Cemetery is the largest deserted burial floor in America with about 150,000 grave websites.
No less than 26 mausoleums and vaults within the cemetery had been damaged into since November 2025.
Police narrowed their search right down to Jonathan after an investigator checked automobile license plates and located that Jonathan’s automotive had been close to the cemetery when the burglaries had occurred.
Police say the break-ins centered on sealed vaults and mausoleums containing older burials, which had been smashed open or had stonework broken to achieve the stays inside.
A tip was additionally submitted on-line which advised that Jonathan was linked to 1 specific mausoleum theft. The tipster mentioned they knew somebody who had been in Jonathan’s house they usually had noticed a “partially decomposed corpse” hanging within the basement.
The tipster additionally mentioned that Jonathan had claimed to have been in Chicago ‘promoting a human cranium.’
Detectives began Jonathan’s social media.
A member of a Fb group really referred to as ‘HUMAN BONES AND SKULL SELLING GROUP’ tagged Jonathan in a submit with a human cranium and thanked him.
“Each eyes stay within the orbital sockets … Snag her earlier than I alter my thoughts,” Jonathan posted in August 2025 with the photograph of a cranium.
One other cranium posted was lacking its face and as a substitute confirmed an open cavity between the brow and the jaw. “Faceless ones are all the time underappreciated,” he posted in July 2024.
In 2024-2025, Jonathan’s neighbor Charles Rothermel reported seeing swarms of flies—”20 or 30 on every window”—overlaying the within of Jonathan’s storage and basement home windows.
Detectives additionally discovered Jonathan on a money fee app and his profile photograph was somebody holding a human cranium.
Jonathan was arrested on January 6, 2026, as he walked again to his Rav4 – presumably from the cemetery – with a crowbar. He was additionally carrying a burlap bag which held the stays of two kids, three skulls and different bones.
Investigators might see bones and skulls seen on the again seat of a automobile.
Once they searched his house and a storage unit underneath his title, they discovered greater than 100 human skulls, lengthy bones, mummified arms and ft, two decomposing torsos and different skeletal gadgets.
Particularly from the storage locker, detectives retrieved: eight human corpses, miscellaneous physique elements, ashes, and older jewellery believed to have been faraway from graves.
“They have been in varied states. A few of them have been hanging, because it have been. A few of them have been pieced collectively, some have been simply skulls on a shelf,” Delaware County District Lawyer Tanner Rouse mentioned.
Most have been within the basement, authorities mentioned, they usually additionally recovered jewellery believed to be linked to the graves. In a single case, a pacemaker was nonetheless connected.
Based on the search warrant within the case, a headlamp, gloves and a metallic reducing wheel, together with different gadgets detectives mentioned have been generally used for burglaries, have been stolen from an area ironmongery store.
Jonathan confessed to investigators that he had stolen round 30 units of human stays. He confirmed them the graves that he had taken the stays from. He advised authorities that “that he bought some stays on-line however that the overwhelming majority of them have been within the basement.’
“Given the enormity of what we’re and the sheer, utter lack of affordable clarification, it’s troublesome to say proper now, at this juncture, precisely what befell. We’re making an attempt to determine it out,” DA Rouse advised reporters.
A authorities official has referred to as the case ‘a horror film come to life.’
Jonathan has been charged with nearly 575 alleged crimes together with 100 counts every of abuse of a corpse and receiving stolen property, together with a number of counts of desecrating a public monument, desecrating a commemorated object, desecrating a historic burial place, housebreaking, trespassing and theft.
A preliminary listening to has been tentatively scheduled for 20 January, 2026.
Buddies of Mount Moriah Cemetery, a non-profit which has striven to take care of the graveyard as a lot as potential, has mentioned it hopes to put in new surveillance cameras, provoke patrols of the grounds, and erect a safety fence within the aftermath of Jonathan’s arrest. The group has additionally requested the general public to think about making tax-deductible donations to the cemetery to assist the deliberate upgrades, because the Philadelphia information outlet WTXF reported.
Christine Mello advised FOX43 that she drove to the cemetery to examine in on her grandparents’ graves shortly after Jonathan’s arrest. She mentioned feels heartbroken for the households who have been impacted by the theft.
“I pulled up and there was an aged man there who was searching for his dad,” Mello recalled. “‘The place’s my dad at? Had been my dad’s bones taken? The place are they?’ And I used to be calming down this man and being like, ‘is he in a mausoleum? What do we all know?’”
In Pennsylvania it’s authorized to purchase and promote human stays. All states permit promoting of human stays aside from eight which have broad bans: Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.
Different states, nonetheless, make it unlawful underneath sure circumstances.
Georgia and Tennessee, for instance, solely permit promoting and buying and selling of human stays inside state boundaries. Nothing can go in or out of their jurisdictions.
Most collectors and sellers in human stays are working authorized companies, in accordance with Jason Haack, proprietor of oddity retailer Bonez by Dezign mentioned.
“We’re not grave robbers,” mentioned Jason, of South Dakota. “We don’t condone that kind of exercise. We don’t wish to see issues being stolen as a result of we respect them for what they’re.
This information is from PennLive.com
Bonez by Dezign has been round for 13 years, and over that point, Haack has dealt with tons of of human stay items. Chatting with PennLive over the cellphone, he counted 14 human skulls sitting round him.
The one moral sourcing for human stays is shopping for gadgets when a college or school auctions them off, in accordance with Haack. This occurs as a result of larger schooling establishments typically use human fashions for instructional functions, however they transform and promote issues off as they’re not wanted.
“It doesn’t occur all that usually, however there’s sufficient ‘stock’ floating across the market to maintain it saturated,” Haack mentioned.
However there are nonetheless moral issues with human stays donated for medical functions. Did these individuals perceive or agree that their stays finally may very well be used and bought by collectors or changed into artwork?
A transparent non-ethical and unlawful solution to supply human stays is stealing from graves. Haack mentioned if there’s a cranium on the market that’s simply “sitting on a desk with a pile of grime underneath it,” buying it could be “an enormous no.”
A grey space of sourcing comes from abroad. Typically, issues are stolen from graves internationally, they usually find yourself within the U.S. market, a technique or one other. Typically, these items are floating across the open marketplace for a long time, and it’s laborious to find out their chronology of possession.
“Most of us on this enterprise know what’s authorized and what’s not, so we don’t have a tendency to fret in regards to the police and feds. The factor it’s a must to study probably the most is your clientele,” Haack mentioned.
If a seller is rumored to partake in grave robbing, racism, sexism or different unlawful and unethical actions, Haack mentioned they get a “notch” on their title and the clientele will “bulldoze you over,” or cease shopping for out of your store.
It’s additionally vital to have respect for the gadgets, he mentioned.
“I’ve plenty of items the place I do know their historical past and the place they got here from,” Haack mentioned.
One in every of his favourite items is a cranium from a 24-year-old man hanged by regulation enforcement in Fort Price, Texas, in 1914. He was executed after taking pictures 5 individuals and killing two in Could 1913.
“I cherish that piece,” Haack mentioned.
Common individuals are typically shocked by the thought of human stays in properties or being bought in outlets and ask Haack why he doesn’t simply bury them, he mentioned.
“Why would we bury the stays? To allow them to be misplaced, forgotten, not beloved? These items are cherished as a lot as in the event that they have been nonetheless residing,” Haack mentioned.
SOURCE LIST
https://version.cnn.com/2026/01/10/us/jonathan-gerlach-ephrata-pennsylvania-grave-robbery
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/14/pennsylvania-grave-robbery-human-remains
