Hours after authorities discovered three of his relatives dead in a Bucks County home, Kevin Castiglia confessed Monday to killing his parents in their sleep and then fatally stabbing his sister when she discovered their bodies, authorities said.
Castiglia, 55, is charged with three counts of criminal homicide, abuse of a corpse, and related crimes in the deaths of his father, Frederick, 90, his mother, Judith, 84, and his sister, Deborah, 53.
Northampton Township police arrested him Monday after he barricaded himself inside his parents’ home on Heather Road for more than five hours with their bodies inside. He was armed with bloody knives as officers surrounded the house and attempted to persuade him to surrender, authorities said.
After his arrest, Castiglia was taken to a local hospital, where, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest, he told a doctor, “I killed my parents in their sleep.” He also said he killed his sister “when she found them,” the affidavit said.
Later at police headquarters, investigators said, Castiglia told officers he had stabbed all three relatives to death.
Castiglia was being held without bail at the Bucks County Correctional Facility.
Bucks County District Attorney Joe Khan speaks at a press conference.
At a news conference Wednesday afternoon, Bucks County prosecutors declined to discuss a possible motive for the slayings. Deputy District Attorney Monica Furber, who is prosecuting the case, said investigators believe Castiglia killed his parents on Friday and his sister on Saturday.
Deborah Castiglia was a longtime teacher in the Centennial School District. She joined the district in 1999, teaching math at Klinger Middle School, according to an email school officials sent to students, parents, staff, and community members. In 2018, she joined the teaching staff of William Tennent High School.
She taught math students with “dedication, care, and compassion,” Superintendent Abram Lucabaugh wrote in the email. “Her loss is profoundly felt across our school community.”
The district is offering counseling and support services for students and staff, Lucabaugh added.
Castiglia’s parents, who had lived in the two-story redbrick home since 1970 and shared it with their son, had recently celebrated a wedding anniversary, Furber said.
Police were called to the home after Deborah Castiglia’s boyfriend reported that Kevin Castiglia had threatened him when he went to the house looking for her, authorities said. He grew concerned after he saw her vehicle parked in the driveway, but could find no footprints in the snow, District Attorney Joe Khan said at Wednesday’s news conference.
When officers arrived, Castiglia greeted them at the front door holding two knives, authorities said.
They used a Taser to try to subdue him — to no avail, according to the affidavit: He pulled the probes from his body and retreated into the house.
Bucks County Detectives and Police are at the Northampton Township home where three people died.
Authorities established a perimeter around the home as negotiators worked to bring the situation to a peaceful end. During the standoff, officers repeatedly attempted to communicate with Castiglia, urging him to come out of the house, police said. But he would not engage, the affidavit said.
A tactical team eventually broke into the house through the front door, as snipers positioned themselves in a nearby house to give on-the-ground officers cover.
“I had no idea what was happening,” said neighbor Erica Titlow, 35. Snipers used the second story of her home during the standoff, she said, calling them “polite” and “grateful.”
The standoff ended when officers took Castiglia into custody, authorities said. No officers were injured.
Police found Deborah Castiglia’s body in the kitchen. The bodies of Frederick and Judith Castiglia were discovered in their bedroom, according to the affidavit, not in the basement as police previously reported.
Furber said one weapon used in the killings was recovered inside the house. Investigators “don’t believe there was any kind of struggle” during the attacks, she said.
Khan praised law enforcement’s efforts to take Castiglia into custody. “Bringing him in alive, despite being faced with an armed and eventually barricaded individual, is truly remarkable,” he said.
Staff writer Jesse Bunch contributed to this article.
A Bucks County man was charged with homicide and related crimes late Tuesday after prosecutors said he killed his father, mother, and sister inside their parents’ Northampton Township home.
The charges came a day after authorities arrested Kevin Castiglia following an hourslong standoff at the home where his relatives were found dead.
Castiglia, 55, was taken into custody after he barricaded himself inside the two-story brick house at 26 Heather Road, where police later discovered the bodies of his 53-year-old sister, Deborah, in the kitchen and his parents, Frederick, 90, and Judith, 84, in the basement.
Authorities have not said how they died.
Castiglia is charged with three counts each of criminal homicide and abuse of a corpse, as well as making terroristic threats, and related crimes.
Police were dispatched to the house about 2:15 p.m. Monday after Deborah Castiglia’s boyfriend called 911 to report that Kevin Castiglia had threatened him with a large chef’s knife when he arrived at the home looking for his girlfriend, authorities said. The boyfriend told police Deborah Castiglia had been missing for several days, according to the affidavit of probable cause for her brother’s arrest.
After officers arrived, the affidavit said, Kevin Castiglia came to the front door armed with two knives, one of which an officer believed had blood on it.
According to the affidavit, Castiglia spoke incoherently and did not respond when officers asked about his family. He pointed the knives at the officers, who deployed Tasers to try to subdue him — without success, the document said.
Castiglia pulled the probes from his body before slamming the door shut and locking it, the affidavit said.
Officers called for a tactical team to break into the house. As police secured the area, neighbors were ordered to shelter in place.
Three found dead in Northampton
David Deleo, 41, was shoveling snow from his driveway when Northampton Township police arrived, he said in a phone interview Tuesday. Within minutes, he said, officers blocked off Heather Road. Police vehicles and emergency crews from neighboring towns and counties soon lined the street, surrounding the house and establishing a perimeter, he said.
From inside her home next door, Erica Titlow, 35, said she looked out a window and saw the man standing at the front door of the house, which has French doors with large glass panes. He was in his underwear, she said, with blood on his chest and stomach. Deleo said that he also saw the man and that he was holding a knife with blood on the blade.
“I had no idea what was happening,” Titlow said. “I thought maybe he was having some kind of mental breakdown and had hurt himself.”
After the man retreated from the doorway, police used a bullhorn to call out to him, Titlow said, urging him to come outside. He did not, and the standoff continued for several hours.
Officers surrounded the house but were unable to enter, Titlow said. Shortly before a SWAT team forced its way through the front door Monday evening, officers went door to door, asking Deleo and Titlow if snipers could use their second-floor windows to provide cover to officers on the ground. They agreed, they said.
Titlow said she spent more than an hour hiding in her basement with her 2-year-old daughter while snipers were positioned inside her home. “I didn’t want her to see any of it,” she said.
Even after officers entered the house, the man was not immediately removed, Deleo said. He watched as police deployed gas canisters inside the home and heard them detonate. Firefighters later connected a hose to a nearby hydrant and sprayed water into the house, according to Deleo and Titlow.
A Bucks County detective truck outside the home where three people died in Southampton on Monday.
Sometime after nightfall — the exact moment was difficult to recall, Titlow said — officers pulled the man from the house. He was restrained on a stretcher as authorities wheeled him away, she said.
By Tuesday morning, police were still at the scene, Titlow said, though the activity had slowed. “It’s a lot quieter now,” she said.
Staff writer Robert Moran contributed to this article.
A Philadelphia police officer opened fire on a man Monday night after the man critically injured another person in Hunting Park, police said. The man, police said, was not hit.
Officers were called about 8:30 p.m. to a Sunoco gas station in the 4100 block of North Broad Street for a report of a man with a gun, according to police Tuesday.
When they arrived, police said, the officers saw multiple men arguing. The men quickly left the gas station and walked toward the intersection of Broad and Jerome Streets, where the fight turned physical, police said.
A 29-year-old man drew a handgun and shot another man in the chest and groin. One of the officers fired at the alleged shooter, police said, but did not strike him.
The alleged shooter ran away, but the officer caught and arrested him in the 1300 block of Jerome Street, police said. Nearby, beneath a parked vehicle, officers found a 9mm handgun.
Paramedics took the victim to Temple University Hospital, where police said he was in critical condition Tuesday. His name was not released.
Police did not release the name of the alleged shooter, who had not yet been formally charged, they said.
The officer, a 36-year-old man with nine years on the police force, was not injured in the incident, police said. He has been placed on administrative duty pending an internal investigation, as per department policy when an officer discharges his gun.
Past a marble monument for a Civil War hero, down a grass path where toppled headstones disappear into ivy and weeds and faded miniature American flags droop, lies the underground vault of James Campbell, who died in 1913 and whose remains mayhave been among the dozens stolen in one of the largest grave desecration cases ever uncovered in Pennsylvania.
Jonathan Christian Gerlach,who was charged with more than 500 offenses earlier this month and is being held in jail in lieu of $1 million bail, is accused of methodically breaking into burial vaults and mausoleums at Mount Moriah Cemetery, prying open caskets and removing human remains from Campbell’s burial ground and at least 25 other sites across the sprawling Philadelphia and Yeadon Borough cemetery.
Inside Campbell’s vault, where his family members were also entombed 12 feet beneath the cemetery’s surface as early as 1872, investigators said they found three broken caskets, crumbled marble, and a discarded pry bar. Six sets of human remains, they said, were missing.
Authorities allege that Gerlach moved through the cemetery repeatedly, at all hours, accessing sealed burial sites and removing dozens of remains over several weekswithout being detected. Large sections of the cemetery, overgrown and rarely monitored, offered long stretches of isolation — conditions investigators say Gerlach may have exploited. And as law enforcement continues to sort through the evidence, local officials and cemetery advocates are pressing for changes to prevent this from happening again.
“We were too slow to move,” said Yeadon Mayor Rohan Hepkins. “Nobody thought such a dastardly act — such an inhumane and incomprehensible act — was possible.”
Hepkins last week joined state and local officials to discuss what can be done to protect the burial grounds, where an estimated 180,000 people are buried.
He and others expressed cautious resolve that the cemeterycould be secured well enough to prevent another violation of this scale.
“I wish I could tell loved ones that I’m not critically concerned, but I am,” said State Sen. Anthony Williams, who represents the district where Mount Moriah Cemetery is located and was one of the officials who gathered to discuss preventive measures. “But I don’t know that Mount Moriah will ever be restored to the condition that they buried their loved ones in.”
Mount Moriah Cemetery, a historic landmark abandoned by its last owner and under court receivership, has long been plagued by neglect and limited oversight.
Investigators say Gerlach’s crimes unfolded over the course of months, starting in the fall and ending on the night of Jan. 6, when Yeadon detectives arrested the Pennsylvania man as he attempted to leave the cemetery.
License plate readers and cell phone towers place Gerlach near or inside the cemetery during both daylight and darkness. On Christmas Eve, for example, the technologies captured Gerlach’s vehicle or phone at least three times between 12:28 a.m. and 12:54 p.m., court records show.
The day before, on Dec. 23, a Yeadon investigator working the case saw scratch marks on the heavy stone slab sealing the underground Zeigler family vault, as if, a detective wrote in an affidavit of probable cause for Gerlach’s arrest, it had been “marked” as a target. When the detective returned on Dec. 26, the stone had been broken and nine sets of human remains stolen.
Yeadon police, who investigated the crimes alongside other authorities, have since been inundated with hundreds of calls and emails from anguished family members seeking answers, Chief Henry Giammarcco said.
Rescuing Mount Moriah
Mount Moriah Cemetery opened in 1855. Its owners, the Mount Moriah Cemetery Association, abandoned it in 2011, after years of mismanagement. The Friends of Mount Moriah, a volunteer-driven nonprofit, formed that same year with the goal of rescuing the grounds from vandalism, crime, and decay. In 2014, a Philadelphia judge appointed a receivership, the Mount Moriah Cemetery Preservation Corporation, to temporarily manage the cemetery until a permanent owner could be found.
More than a decade later, no permanent owner has emerged.
In 2018, the two groups and other stakeholders commissioned an ambitious strategic plan that called for stabilizing the cemetery’s finances, finding a permanent owner, and remaking Mount Moriah into a viable public space. The plan assumed significant investment and long-term stewardship. Neither materialized.
“There’s no clear revenue stream, and there’s significant infrastructure improvements and capital improvements that are required, on top of maintenance costs,” said Brian Abernathy, who served as chair of the preservation corporation when the plan was created.
At the time, Abernathy said, “there was a lot of hope and optimism about what we could accomplish with it. But the plan stalled over obstacles that persist today, he said, including enticing an owner when so many costly repairs are needed.
Under the court order, the corporation — a board composed of officials from Philadelphia and Yeadon, including Hepkins — is responsible for preserving the cemetery but has delegated day-to-day care to Friends of Mount Moriah.
Over the years, Friends of Mount Moriah made visible gains. Its 12-person board and volunteers hauled away abandoned cars, tires. and trash, righted toppled headstones, and uncovered burial vaults beneath thick vines, brush, and overgrowth.
“Until this happened,” said John Schmehl Jr., the group’s president, “security was not our first concern.”
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Yet thieves knew the grounds. Last year, Schmehl said, more than $14,000 worth of lawn equipment — including mowers, weed trimmers, and hand tools — was stolen from the cemetery garage. Friends of Mount Moriah entered the growing season without the equipment needed to keep large sections of the cemetery accessible, he said.
Now, the group is scrambling to implement security improvements across the cemetery’s more than 100 acres, including repairing dilapidated fencing, launching random patrols, and installing cameras on both the Philadelphia and Yeadon sides of the property. Fencing construction began last week. Schmehl said the group is seeking a private security company to monitor the cameras around the clock.
Cemetery volunteers dwindle
The backyard of 60-year-old Robin Pitts’ house overlooks the Springfield Avenue side of Mount Moriah, where her mother, brother, and extended family are buried.
As a child, Pitts said, she played kickball on an unfenced stretch of the cemetery near where Betsy Ross — the seamstress whose burial helped cement Mount Moriah’s place in American history — rested for more than a century.
Those memories later drew Pitts to volunteer with Friends of Mount Moriah for nearly two decades, she said. On Saturdays, she said, she grilled hot dogs and hamburgers for volunteers who picked up trash and mowed the grass along Springfield Avenue.
But during the pandemic, Pitts said, the grounds began to deteriorate beyond what volunteers could manage. “I thought, ‘Enough’s enough. I can’t do this anymore,’” she said. She stopped volunteering.
Last week, Pitts walked down a path choked with waist-high grass and weeds where she once mowed. She pointed past a tangle of barren hemlock blocking a path to a tree and several headstones — some toppled, others obscured by vines and brush. “We used to clean it all the way past there,” Pitts said. “Now nobody does.”
A shrinking volunteer base has slowed progress at the cemetery, Schmehl said. Some cleanup events draw just one volunteer. “It’s a struggle, to say the least,” he said, adding that entire sections of the cemetery “have been reclaimed by nature.”
Picture of dog waste discarded on the grounds of Mount Moriah Cemetery on Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026.
The cemetery is now open just two days a week, Saturdays and Sundays.
The costs of needed improvements are also significant. By Thursday, Friends of Mount Moriah had spent more than $20,000 of its roughly $90,000 annual budget to begin fencing construction and repairs, and secure the mausoleums and vaults that had been desecrated in the recent crimes. Additional donations, Schmehl said, will be needed to sustain the effort.
As recently as spring 2023, Mount Moriah Cemetery Preservation Corp. held more than $400,000 in its endowment, according to a letter filed in Philadelphia Orphans’ Court. Aubrey Powers,the receivership’s chair, did not respond to questions concerning the receivership’s contributions to the Friends of Mount Moriah or what the corporation will do to helpaddress security or infrastructure needs.
As a condition of the receivership, the corporation must file semiannual reports to the court. A year ago, the only reference to security was a brief note stating that the receivership “continues to encourage the Philadelphia and Yeadon Police Departments to schedule patrols in and around Mount Moriah Cemetery more frequently to deter criminal activity.”
Hepkins said increased patrols would be part of a broader strategyto reduce criminal activity and restore oversight to the cemetery. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia Police Department said officers patrol the cemetery’s perimeter, not its grounds.
“There has to be some sort of intervention in order to rectify what’s happened at Mount Moriah,” Abernathy said. “And I just don’t know who’s going to provide that intervention.”
Whose remains are missing?
Hepkins on Wednesday climbed a steep hill from a small parking lot off Cobbs Creek Parkway to a cluster of mausoleums that Gerlach is accused of breaking into.
Yeadon Mayor Rohan Hepkins during a walking tour of Mount Moriah Cemetery, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. Graves at the cemetery were allegedly robbed by Jonathan Christian Gerlach.
At the family mausoleum of John Hunter, a former president of the Mount Moriah Cemetery Association, authorities allege Gerlach smashed through a sealed cinder-block doorway and shattered the marble floor. He then rappelled 10 feet into the crypt and removed the remains of 15-year-old Martha Hunter, who died in 1869.
He left behind a length of white rope and a screwdriver, authorities said.
Just feet away, in the mausoleum of wholesale grocer Jonathan Prichard, Gerlach pulled cinder block from a sealed window and rifled through five of nine caskets inside, investigators allege. The remains of 62-year-old Mary Prichard Steigleman, Prichard’s daughter, are now missing.
Nearby is the family vault of John McCullough, a Shakespearean actor who died in 1889. Beneath a towering monument etched with a line from Julius Caesar, authorities said they found two caskets disturbed, one tipped onto its side. Both were empty.
More than a week after Gerlach’s alleged break-in, bricks torn from the vault’s seal lay piled beside the entrance, and a foot-long hole exposed the floor below. Inside, wooden pallets that investigators believe Gerlach used to climb down cluttered the crypt.
The McCullough family burial tomb at Mount Moriah Cemetery, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. This and several other graves at this cemetery were allegedly broken into by Jonathan Christian Gerlach.
A short walk away is the cemetery’s naval plot, where rows of identical white headstones mark the graves of more than 2,000 Navy officers. It’s Hepkins’ favorite part of the cemetery, he said.
Hepkins once hoped to be buried at Mount Moriah, a place he called “godly.” Now, he said, “I have to reconsider. I want my bones held somewhere in sacred perpetuity.”
A week after authorities arrested Jonathan Christian Gerlach on charges of stealing human remains from Mount Moriah Cemetery, the consequences of the case continue to unfold — from a small police department fielding frantic pleas from families to a coroner’s office now responsible for safeguarding more than 100 unidentified bones and body parts.
Since the arrest, the Yeadon Police Department has been inundated with calls and emails from relatives fearful that the graves of their loved ones were disturbed, Police Chief Henry Giammarco said. The remains recovered during the investigation — including skulls, bones, and other human fragments — were seized from Gerlach’s basement and from a separate storage unit, both in Ephrata, and are now in the custody of the Lancaster County Coroner’s Office.
Gerlach is accused of systematically removing skulls and bones from graves at Mount Moriah, a sprawling historic cemetery that spans Philadelphia and Yeadon Borough. The case has drawn national attention, prompting widespread media coverage and intensifying concern among families with relatives buried at the cemetery.
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As of Wednesday afternoon, Giammarco said, his department had received more than 200 calls and emails from people across Pennsylvania and from as far away as Montreal and Hawaii, many asking whether authorities could confirm whether specific graves had been disturbed or whether their loved ones’ remains were among those recovered.
Inside the coroner’s office, the remains have been cataloged and placed in secure storage, Coroner Stephen Diamantoni said. They will remain there until Gerlach’s criminal case is resolved.
Diamantoni said his office does not plan to attempt to identify the remains — a task he described as virtually impossible given their age, their condition, and the circumstances in which they were recovered.
When the bones were seized from Gerlach’s home and storage unit, Diamantoni said, they were not labeled or organized in any way that would indicate where they came from or whom they belonged to. In many cases, he said, remains from different individuals were mixed together, a condition known as commingling, “on a scale that I’ve never encountered.”
Compounding the challenge, some of the remains are believed to be hundreds of years old, Diamantoni said, and are in advanced states of decay. Even under ideal conditions, identifying such remains would be difficult. In this case, he said, it would be “a herculean task” to attempt to match the bones to specific burial sites — let alone to determine whose remains they were.
Even if that were somehow possible, Diamantoni said, identifying a living family member would present another nearly insurmountable hurdle, given the age of the remains.
Back in Yeadon, Giammarco said he has tried to provide as much clarity as possible to families reaching out in distress. While the investigation is ongoing, he said, authorities have identified thefts only from mausoleums and underground vaults — structures that are larger and deeper than standard graves and are constructed differently. He spent much of the weekend returning calls and responding to emails, he said, hoping to ease fears.
“If it would have been my family,” Giammarco said, “I would have wanted someone to contact me.”
Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse, whose office is prosecuting Gerlach, said Wednesday the investigation into the crimes was ongoing.
A man was killed and a woman was injured Sunday night after two shooters fired into a tow truck parked in Northeast Philadelphia, police said.
The man, 25-year-old Aaron Whitfield, died at the scene of the shooting on the 2100 block of Knorr Street, police said. A 21-year-old woman struck in the leg by a bullet survived.
According to police, Whitfield, who works as a tow-truck driver, and the woman were inside the vehicle when the shooters drove up to the truck’s passenger side and opened fire at 7:52 p.m.
Officers who responded to a report of gunshots found Whitfield inside the tow truck. He’d been shot multiple times in his head and body, police said, and attempts by medics to resuscitate him failed.
The woman, whose name was not released by police, was transported to Jefferson Einstein Philadelphia Hospital. Police said that she was stable.
Investigators collected 17 bullet casings at the scene, police said. Bullets also struck nearby buildings, but no one else was injured, police said.
No arrests had been made in the shooting as of midday Monday. Police said a motive for the killing has not yet been determined, and it’s unknown whether either Whitfield or the woman were intentionally targeted.
Documents released Friday offer new detail on how investigators assembled their striking case against Jonathan Christian Gerlach, who authorities say desecrated dozens of graves to steal human remains.
Gerlach, 34, who is charged with stealing more than 100 skulls, bones, and body parts from Mount Moriah Cemetery, also posted dozens of photos of human remains on social media, records show, and authorities are investigating whether he may have offered to sell them.
The investigation into Gerlach, who lives in Ephrata, spans multiple counties and law enforcement agencies. The historic cemetery stretches across Philadelphia and Yeadon, Delaware County, where officials charged Gerlach on Thursday.
Gerlach’s lawyer, Anna Hinchman, declined to comment Friday, citing the pending criminal case.
In all, Gerlach faces more than 500 counts of burglary, criminal trespassing, abuse of a corpse, theft, and related crimes.
“After 30 years, I can say this is probably the most horrific thing that I’ve seen,” said Yeadon Police Chief Henry Giammarco, whose department was involved in the investigation.
A few Mausoleum’s that Jonathan Gerlach broke into at Mount Moriah Cemetery in Philadelphia.
Grave sites damaged, remains stolen
Detectives were first dispatched to the burial ground on Nov. 7, according to the affidavit of probable cause for Gerlach’s arrest. There, a board member of the Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery — the group that helps to maintain the burial ground — led the investigators to a mausoleum where a hole in protective cinder blocks revealed a damaged marble floor, 10 feet underground. A white rope, which detectives believe the thief used to rappel into the mausoleum, hung nearby.
They discovered other disturbed burial sites, both that afternoon and weeks later, according to the affidavit: a crypt with its marble entrance stone ripped off, whatever was inside stolen; a damaged, empty casket inside a mausoleum; a clear plastic tarp covering human remains discarded on the ground of the cemetery.
Investigators collected clues, including the rope, a “Monster” energy drink can, and a partially smoked Marlboro Menthol cigarette. Each will be sent for DNA testing, the affidavit said.
On Dec. 23, the document shows, police received a tip pointing to Gerlach. “Look into Jonathan Gerlach,” the tipster said, according to the affidavit. “I know someone who’s friends with his family, and they mentioned that they recently discovered a partially decomposed corpse hanging in his basement, but were afraid to tell police.”
The tipster also pointed investigators to Instagram. “You’ll see he follows accounts in taxidermy, skeleton collecting and sales,” the tipster said.
Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse speaks to reporters on Thursday about Jonathan Gerlach, who is charged with burglary, abuse of corpse and desecration, and theft or sale of venerated objects for allegedly stealing from graves.
An Instagram trail
The last post on the Instagram account that Delaware County authorities have linked to Gerlach appeared on Tuesday, the day that detectives took him into custody, after they say they witnessed him carrying a burlap sack filled with human remains out of the cemetery.
A partial skull — its surface darkened and pitted with age, mounted upright like an artifact — appears in the post. Staged against a floral backdrop, the photo is paired with a caption that reads: “if you know, you know. skulls/bones available. dm to inquire.”
The post and dozens of others like it on the account suggest that Gerlach may have been part of a largely unregulated and little-known marketplace in which human bones and remains are bought and sold online and in specialty shops. It’s a trade that can be legal under certain circumstances in a number of states, including Pennsylvania, and one that records suggest Gerlach may have engaged with — though investigators have not confirmed he ever successfully made a sale.
Authorities say the investigation is continuing.
Gerlach is charged with crimes associated with how authorities say he acquired the bones: by breaking into the cemetery’s mausoleums and underground vaults and stealing the remains.
Investigators tied Gerlach’s vehicle to license plate readers near Mount Moriah, they said, and his cell phone to the area. A search of his recent purchases revealed trips to a hardware store to buy items that matched those that detectives had also recovered at damaged grave sites, including a stake.
When detectives executed a search warrant at Gerlach’s home, in the 100 block of Washington Avenue, they said they found skulls arranged on shelves, and a collection of other bones, skeletons and mummified body parts, including feet and hands. They also found a torso hanging from the ceiling, said Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse.
Potential sales, and a call for change
Rouse and Detective Christopher Karr said law enforcement officials are aware of social media accounts associated with Gerlach and are investigating what, if any, connection they may have to his alleged crimes.
Rouse said accounts linked to Gerlach “certainly seemed to indicate” that Gerlach had attempted to sell the remains. “But whether that was real or not — whether a sale had ever been consummated — we can’t say for sure,” he said.
The Instagram account, which dates back to 2023, includes images of human remains arranged on shelves and tables, or held in a man’s hands. Its posts raise questions about whether Gerlach’s alleged activity extended beyond what authorities have detailed so far.
Investigators are working to determine when and where the images were taken and whether any of the items pictured were stolen from Mount Moriah, Rouse said.
In addition to a curator and potential salesperson, the Instagram account presents Gerlach as a forensic practitioner and professional.
In a recent post that pictured Gerlach holding a skull fragment beneath his heavily tattooed neck, the account’s operator wrote that he was completing a certification in forensic and osteological analysis, and planned to offer analysis through a planned company — describing services that would assess human remains using academic and forensic standards.
Gerlach is being held in the Delaware County jail in lieu of $1 million bail.
The investigation into Gerlach remains ongoing, Yeadon Borough Mayor Rohan Hepkins said Friday. Gerlach is suspected of burglarizing additional cemeteries, including in Ephrata, said Hepkins, who also sits on the board of the Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery and said he helped to bring the case to police.
In a written statement, the Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery thanked law enforcement officials but declined to comment.
Hepkins expressed dismay that the legal trade of human remains is even possible, and called for reform. “People never conceived that people would be stealing bones from graves and selling them in the market,” he said. “Politicians need to understand there is a type of individual out there — or a market out there — where legislation has to catch up with what’s happening out there.
“It’s a bad situation but a lot of good, preventive maintenance could come out of it,” he added.
Documents released Friday offer new detail on how investigators assembled their striking case against Jonathan Christian Gerlach, who authorities say desecrated dozens of graves to steal human remains.
Gerlach, 34, who is charged with stealing more than 100 skulls, bones, and body parts from Mount Moriah Cemetery, also posted dozens of photos of human remains on social media, records show, and authorities are investigating whether he may have offered to sell them.
The investigation into Gerlach, who lives in Ephrata, spans multiple counties and law enforcement agencies. The historic cemetery stretches across Philadelphia and Yeadon, Delaware County, where officials charged Gerlach on Thursday.
Gerlach’s lawyer, Anna Hinchman, declined to comment Friday, citing the pending criminal case.
In all, Gerlach faces more than 500 counts of burglary, criminal trespassing, abuse of a corpse, theft, and related crimes.
“After 30 years, I can say this is probably the most horrific thing that I’ve seen,” said Yeadon Police Chief Henry Giammarco, whose department was involved in the investigation.
A few Mausoleum’s that Jonathan Gerlach broke into at Mount Moriah Cemetery in Philadelphia.
Grave sites damaged, remains stolen
Detectives were first dispatched to the burial ground on Nov. 7, according to the affidavit of probable cause for Gerlach’s arrest. There, a board member of the Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery — the group that helps to maintain the burial ground — led the investigators to a mausoleum where a hole in protective cinder blocks revealed a damaged marble floor, 10 feet underground. A white rope, which detectives believe the thief used to rappel into the mausoleum, hung nearby.
They discovered other disturbed burial sites, both that afternoon and weeks later, according to the affidavit: a crypt with its marble entrance stone ripped off, whatever was inside stolen; a damaged, empty casket inside a mausoleum; a clear plastic tarp covering human remains discarded on the ground of the cemetery.
Investigators collected clues, including the rope, a “Monster” energy drink can, and a partially smoked Marlboro Menthol cigarette. Each will be sent for DNA testing, the affidavit said.
On Dec. 23, the document shows, police received a tip pointing to Gerlach. “Look into Jonathan Gerlach,” the tipster said, according to the affidavit. “I know someone who’s friends with his family, and they mentioned that they recently discovered a partially decomposed corpse hanging in his basement, but were afraid to tell police.”
The tipster also pointed investigators to Instagram. “You’ll see he follows accounts in taxidermy, skeleton collecting and sales,” the tipster said.
Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse speaks to reporters on Thursday about Jonathan Gerlach, who is charged with burglary, abuse of corpse and desecration, and theft or sale of venerated objects for allegedly stealing from graves.
An Instagram trail
The last post on the Instagram account that Delaware County authorities have linked to Gerlach appeared on Tuesday, the day that detectives took him into custody, after they say they witnessed him carrying a burlap sack filled with human remains out of the cemetery.
A partial skull — its surface darkened and pitted with age, mounted upright like an artifact — appears in the post. Staged against a floral backdrop, the photo is paired with a caption that reads: “if you know, you know. skulls/bones available. dm to inquire.”
The post and dozens of others like it on the account suggest that Gerlach may have been part of a largely unregulated and little-known marketplace in which human bones and remains are bought and sold online and in specialty shops. It’s a trade that can be legal under certain circumstances in a number of states, including Pennsylvania, and one that records suggest Gerlach may have engaged with — though investigators have not confirmed he ever successfully made a sale.
Authorities say the investigation is continuing.
Gerlach is charged with crimes associated with how authorities say he acquired the bones: by breaking into the cemetery’s mausoleums and underground vaults and stealing the remains.
Investigators tied Gerlach’s vehicle to license plate readers near Mount Moriah, they said, and his cell phone to the area. A search of his recent purchases revealed trips to a hardware store to buy items that matched those that detectives had also recovered at damaged grave sites, including a stake.
When detectives executed a search warrant at Gerlach’s home, in the 100 block of Washington Avenue, they said they found skulls arranged on shelves, and a collection of other bones, skeletons and mummified body parts, including feet and hands. They also found a torso hanging from the ceiling, said Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse.
Potential sales, and a call for change
Rouse and Detective Christopher Karr said law enforcement officials are aware of social media accounts associated with Gerlach and are investigating what, if any, connection they may have to his alleged crimes.
Rouse said accounts linked to Gerlach “certainly seemed to indicate” that Gerlach had attempted to sell the remains. “But whether that was real or not — whether a sale had ever been consummated — we can’t say for sure,” he said.
The Instagram account, which dates back to 2023, includes images of human remains arranged on shelves and tables, or held in a man’s hands. Its posts raise questions about whether Gerlach’s alleged activity extended beyond what authorities have detailed so far.
Investigators are working to determine when and where the images were taken and whether any of the items pictured were stolen from Mount Moriah, Rouse said.
In addition to a curator and potential salesperson, the Instagram account presents Gerlach as a forensic practitioner and professional.
In a recent post that pictured Gerlach holding a skull fragment beneath his heavily tattooed neck, the account’s operator wrote that he was completing a certification in forensic and osteological analysis, and planned to offer analysis through a planned company — describing services that would assess human remains using academic and forensic standards.
Gerlach is being held in the Delaware County jail in lieu of $1 million bail.
The investigation into Gerlach remains ongoing, Yeadon Borough Mayor Rohan Hepkins said Friday. Gerlach is suspected of burglarizing additional cemeteries, including in Ephrata, said Hepkins, who also sits on the board of the Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery and said he helped to bring the case to police.
In a written statement, the Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery thanked law enforcement officials but declined to comment.
Hepkins expressed dismay that the legal trade of human remains is even possible, and called for reform. “People never conceived that people would be stealing bones from graves and selling them in the market,” he said. “Politicians need to understand there is a type of individual out there — or a market out there — where legislation has to catch up with what’s happening out there.
“It’s a bad situation but a lot of good, preventive maintenance could come out of it,” he added.
He stored them in the basement, authorities said — the human bones and headless torsos, the skulls and mummified feet, a skeleton with a pacemaker still attached. More than 100 pieces and parts, in all.
There were so many remains, they said, that the police officers who discovered them stopped short, stunned by what they were seeing.
Jonathan Christian Gerlach, 34, of Ephrata, is charged in what Delaware County law enforcement officials described as the most sweeping and unsettling case of its kind they have encountered: the systematic theft of human remains from Mount Moriah Cemetery, the sprawling 160-acre burial ground that straddles Philadelphia and Yeadon Borough, and the place where Betsy Ross was once interred and Civil War soldiers still lie.
“After 30 years, I can say this is probably the most horrific thing that I’ve seen,” said Yeadon Police Chief Henry Giammarco.
Authorities announced Gerlach’s arrest Thursday on charges of burglary, abuse of corpse and desecration and theft or sale of venerated objects. He is being held in jail in lieu of $1 million bail.
Inside the Delaware County District Attorney’s Office, law enforcement officials projected Gerlach’s photo — his neck covered in tattoos, a gold ring through his nose, green eyes rimmed red — onto a television screen as they outlined crimes whose scale and depravity District Attorney Tanner Rouse said were difficult to comprehend.
Prosecutors said Gerlach repeatedly broke into mausoleums and underground vaults, prying them open with tools and carrying away bodies, bones, and body parts, leaving behind desecrated graves and questions.
The thefts began last fall, authorities said, and ended after dark on Jan. 6, when Yeadon Borough detectives caught Gerlach as he was leaving the cemetery.
For weeks, the detectives had been tracking reports of vandalism and theft from at least 26 mausoleums and underground vaults inside Mount Moriah Cemetery, said Yeadon Mayor Rohan Hepkins, who sits on the cemetery’s board and who brought the case to police.
Investigators tied Gerlach to the crimes, investigators said, after his brown Toyota RAV4 began appearing on nearby license plate readers around the times the burglaries were believed to have occurred. The vehicle had never shown up on the readers before the thefts began, according to the affidavit of probable cause for Gerlach’s arrest. Records also showed his cell phone in the area.
“This was good, old-fashioned police work,” Rouse said.
On Jan. 6, detectives said they watched Gerlach walk out of the cemetery carrying a burlap sack and a crowbar. He was arrested beside his SUV, its back seat strewn with human remains. Inside the sack, detectives said, were the mummified remains of two children, three skulls, and several loose bones.
According to the affidavit, Gerlach told detectives he had used the crowbar to pry open a grave that night to steal the remains. He also admitted to taking at least 30 sets of human remains from across the cemetery, investigators said.
The next day, Jan. 7, a search of Gerlach’s home on the 100 block of Washington Avenue in Ephrata uncovered what Rouse described as the grim collection he had been amassing: remains scattered on shelves and suspended from the ceiling, some in fragments, others stitched back together.
Despite what authorities called overwhelming evidence that Gerlach committed the crimes, much remains unknown, Rouse said Thursday.
“We don’t know what he was doing with them,” he said.
Investigators have not identified a motive, and they cannot say whether Mount Moriah was the only cemetery targeted.
“There are other reports out there that we have not been able to corroborate,” Rouse said, declining to name specific locations. “And frankly, I don’t know that we ever will.”
Philadelphia police are searching for a man they say tried to steal a package from the front steps of a Feltonville home, then exchanged gunfire with both the homeowner and responding officers before fleeing Sunday evening.
Security camera footage from a home in the 400 block of East Rockland Street shows a man approaching the front steps and attempting to take a package, police said. The homeowner, a 50-year-old man, came outside carrying a handgun and confronted him, police said.
The homeowner fired a shot into the ground, police said, prompting the man to run. As he fled, the man fired a gun at the homeowner, they said.
Officers who had been called to the area after reports of a crowd and a person with a weapon on the 4900 block of D Street heard the gunfire and ran toward it, police said. When they encountered the man, police said, he fired his weapon at one of the officers, and the officer fired back.
The man escaped, police said. Officers later recovered a .40-caliber handgun and a jacket on Rockland Street.
Police described the suspect as light-skinned with a stocky build, and a possible goatee. He was last seen wearing a brown coat, black pants, and gray sneakers.
Police ask that anyone with information about the man or the shooting call or text police at 215-683-1866.
The Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction.
The officer who fired his weapon has been placed on administrative duty, as is customary, pending an internal investigation, police said. His name has not been released.
