100 skeletons found in home of man who looted historic cemetery, police say

Police investigators were staking out the historic, 200 acre Mount Moriah Cemetery in southwest Philadelphia on Tuesday evening when their suspect fin...

Police investigators were staking out the historic, 200-acre Mount Moriah Cemetery in southwest Philadelphia on Tuesday evening when their suspect finally emerged carrying a crow bar and a burlap bag.

For months, mausoleums in the graveyard, some more than a hundred years old, were being looted in the dead of night, police said. Finally, they believed they had found the perpetrator. Before they arrested the suspect, identified by police as Jonathan Gerlach, police said they could see numerous bones and skulls in the back seat of his car.

Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse said Thursday it wasn’t the first time Gerlach, 34, had burglarized tombs in the area. Investigators wrote in an affidavit that when they searched Gerlach’s home, they found more than 100 “human skeletons,” including mummified hands and feet and skulls on shelves, some of which were 200 years old.

These robberies happened “under the cloak of darkness, very much secreted from public view,” Rouse said. “This guy did everything in his power to secretly and silently grave rob. Mount Moriah did everything they could to stop him from doing it. But as you can imagine, cemetery that size, it is very difficult.”

Gerlach has been charged with 574 counts, and dozens more of desecrating a public monument, trespassing and theft, according to court documents. He is being held under a $1 million cash bail at Delaware County Prison. An attorney for Gerlach could not be reached for comment.