When you thought you saw it all.. life tells you to hold its Yuengling..
Joking aside.. this is disgusting..
Jonathan Gerlach allegedly has an Instagram account by the username “deadshitdaddy” with the subtitle “Ledger of the Dead”. On the page he claims he is a private consultant conducting “provenance & forensic documentation of human remains”
The investigation began in November when people reported missing remains from the cemetery. The investigation gained traction when an anonymous tip gave police info. The tipster claimed to have been inside the home and witnessed dead bodies hanging from the ceiling. The tipster also said that Gerlach traveled as far as Chicago to deliver bones to a customer.
Police set up undercover surveillance at Mount Moriah Cemetery in Yeadon and caught Gerlach in the act.
According to court documents, investigators recovered more than 100 human skulls, long bones, and mummified human feet and hands from his basement. Eight corpses, along with body parts, ashes, jewelry and clothing believed to have been taken from graves, were found inside the storage unit.
MORE..
Police say Gerlach targeted mausoleums and underground vaults at the 1855 cemetery. It’s considered the country’s largest abandoned burial ground, according to Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery, which helps maintain the 160-acre landmark in Yeadon that’s home to an estimated 150,000 grave sites.
Police say the investigation remains active. Authorities are urging anyone with loved ones buried at Mount Moriah Cemetery who has concerns to contact Yeadon Borough Police.
At the time this is written his Facebook is still active..
Some of the comments on his most recent profile picture indicate that people did not even know he was on their friends list until this news broke..
The human remains trade has been in the news in Pennsylvania over the previous few months..
On Dec. 22, Jeremy Pauley was sentenced to six years in prison after he admitted to participating in a multi-state network of buying and selling body parts like hearts, hands, brains, faces and other body parts. Pauley was a Cumberland County native..
He was sentenced for conspiracy and interstate transportation of stolen property, as the body parts had been stolen from Harvard Medical School and an Arkansas mortuary by different individuals involved in the ring. Pauley, along with his fiancé Sophie Mae Vee, run the Wunderkammer Olde Curiosities Shoppe in Honesdale, Pa., which still sells items like human bones, taxidermized animals and other oddities.
There seems to be a larger story underneath the headlines about Gerlach and Pauley..
Authorities announced they’re investigating a Facebook group titled “Human Bones and Skull Selling Group,” where Gerlach got a shout-out from a Facebook friend regarding a “human skin bag.” Gerlach sold human remains to at least one person via these social media platforms, receiving payment through CashApp, a type of digital wallet linked to cellphone numbers, police said.
There is a big GLOBAL market for human remains–not just in the keystone state or the Northeast. It is worldwide.
There are some dark facts here.. it is NOT illegal to sell human remains under federal law. The linked Conversation article detail that sale of human remains is broadly and expressly illegal in only eight states: Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia. Pennsylvania is also noted many times in the human remains trade.
Judging from commentary on Gerlach’s social media and reaction on places such as the Oddities, Curiosity, antiques and skulls for sale Facebook page, it is VERY active in Pennsylvania.
If an individual or their family donates remains to science, typically a nonprofit organization or university takes possession of the remains…
However, people sometimes donate to a non-transplant tissue bank, often called “body brokers.” Given the high costs of funeral arrangements in the U.S., some families donate a loved one’s remains to body brokers, who dispose of remains without cost to the family. Body brokers carve up human remains and distribute them to be used in medical therapy or research, with little regulation .. you can read more about the subject from a 2017 Reuters investigation. They do charge for processing and transporting human remains, and one such company, Science Care, generated $27 million in revenue in 2017.
Obviously this will continue to be a developing story .. we will pay attention to media and law enforcement reports on this matter..
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