A Pennsylvania man faces more than 500 charges after more than 100 human remains were discovered in his home in a case authorities are calling “a horror movie come to life.”
Jonathan Gerlach, 34, was charged with 26 counts of burglary, 26 counts of criminal trespass, 100 counts of abuse of corpse, 100 counts of receiving stolen property, 26 counts of intentional desecration of public monument, among other related offenses, WPVI reported.
His arrest comes after law enforcement spent months investigating a series of break-ins and desecrations at Mount Moriah Cemetery in Yeadon, Pennsylvania, where at least 26 mausoleums and underground vaults containing mostly older burials had been forced open. The break-ins started in November.
Gerlach was found out after he was spotted at the cemetery on Jan. 6 while investigators were conducting surveillance. Authorities saw a vehicle with numerous bones and skulls in the backseat. They learned the car was registered to Gerlach after running the license plates.
Gerlach was also seen leaving the cemetery with a crowbar and a burlap bag that contained the mummified remains of two small children, three skulls, and other bones.
Police say he admitted to taking more than 30 sets of human remains and showed officers the graves he dug up.
After he was arrested, investigators searched his home, where they found well over 100 skeletal remains in the basement, some of which belonged to infants and children.
“Detectives walked into a horror movie come to life the other night. This is an unbelievable scene,” said Tanner Rouse, the Delaware County District Attorney. “Understand, some of these are 200 years old. Some obviously much newer, there’s one with a pacemaker still attached to the body.”
Authorities say the accused serial grave robber may have also stolen remains from other cemeteries in the region.
“There were so many that they were in various states,” Rouse said. “Some of them were hanging, as it were. Some of them were pieced together, some were just skulls on a shelf … It is truly in the most literal sense of the word, horrific.”
Authorities say they don’t yet know why Gerlach stole the remains or what he intended to do with them. They’re looking into whether he was selling or trading the remains online after he was seen holding a skull in a picture posted to a Facebook group titled “Human Bones and Skull Selling Group.”
The investigation into the case is ongoing.
“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. It’s going to be quite some time before we have a final answer,” stated Rouse.
According to WGAL, police used cellphone records to trace Gerlach’s movements and discovered his phone pinged at the Mount Moriah six times from Halloween 2025 to Christmas Eve.
Gerlach is currently in jail on a $1 million bond. His preliminary hearing is on Jan. 20.
