Desecration at Mount Moriah

by M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
In late 2025, police were tipped off that someone was damaging mausoleums and crypts inside Mount Moriah Cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. What they found was beyond what they originally suspected.

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Picture posted by Gerlach on his facebook page

Mount Moriah Cemetery opened in 1855 and covers nearly 200 acres with approximately 200,000 burials. In 2011, it was abandoned, and Friends of Mount Moriah took over the restoration of the property, which had been neglected for many years. It is considered the largest abandoned burial ground in the United States.

It is situated on the outskirts of Philadelphia, and is the resting place of  Civil War soldiers, and former Philadelphia mayor Samuel Miles was interred in 1805. He was an American Revolutionary War general and statesman. The founder of Brown University is also buried here, as well as Betsy Ross, the Philadelphia seamstress credited with sewing the first US flag.

In January 2026, police spied bones and skulls in the back seat of a Toyota Rav 4 parked near the cemetery. The car belonged to Jonathan Christian Gerlach, age 34. He was arrested as he returned to the car with a crowbar and a burlap bag in which officers found the mummified remains of two small children, three skulls, and other bones.

By then, about 26 mausoleums and vaults had been broken into, so they had good reason to suspect they had found the culprit. Police received an online tip urging them to investigate whether Gerlach was connected to a particular mausoleum robbery.

The investigation led to Gerlach's home and to KO Storage at 851 E. Main St., Ephrata Township, where he rented a unit. Most of the remains were in the basement, and more than 100 human skulls, long bones, mummified hands and feet, two decomposing torsos, and other skeletal items were found. Jewelry was recovered, and one set of remains still had a pacemaker attached.

Gerlach targeted sealed underground vaults and mausoleums, which contained older burials.

One of Gerlach's neighbors, interviewed by a local station, recalled seeing numerous flies latched onto the windows in the garage, which had the blinds drawn.

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The entrance to Mt. Moriah Cemetery c.19th-century

According to Delaware County D.A.: "They were in various states. Some of them were hanging, as it were. Some of them were pieced together, some were just skulls on a shelf."

The remains have been catalogued and secured inside the coroner's office. Coroner Stephen Diamantoni said his offices will not attempt to identify the remains, since they were mixed up so thoroughly. It's unknown where they were originally taken from, and some of them are in an advanced state of decay and are believed to be hundreds of years old.

It's alleged that Gerlach may have been selling the remains online and traveled as far away as Chicago to broker the sale of a human skull. There's evidence pointing to an Instagram account, @deadshitdaddy, where he posted images of skulls and bones with captions suggesting they were for sale.

This is reminiscent of the case involving a manager from Harvard Medical School who was caught selling donated body parts. Several persons in the network of buying and selling the remains were convicted in 2025.

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Jonathan Prichard, left, stands next to his family in front of his Swarthmore home . Prichard's mausoleum in Mount Moriah Cemetery, containing his remains as well as those of several relatives, was disturbed amid break-ins of several burial sites in the area.

​Gerlach is facing 500 criminal charges related to abuse of a corpse and receiving stolen property, along with multiple counts of desecrating a public monument, desecrating a venerated object, desecrating a historic burial place, burglary, trespassing, and theft. He is jailed on a $1 million bond. 

A week after Gerlach's arrest, police were investigating his connection to the theft of two graves from Good Shepherd Memorial Cemetery in Luzerne County, where evidence was found near empty crypts. This cemetery, like Mount Moriah, is abandoned.

A resident who does voluntary clean up of the grounds found two coffins that had been damaged and emptied out.

Close by two empty energy drink cans and cigarette butts were found and are being tested for a DNA match to Gerlach.

A local funeral director started to see missing plaques from some of the crypts, and one of the crypts had a line of bricks hammered out to see if a body was inside. 

There were 79 people originally buried at Good Shepherd; 32 remained, and now there are 30.

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Jonathan Gerlach, center, is accused of stealing human remains from Mount Moriah Cemetery. Blake McClimon, left, was in a metalcore band with Gerlach (Source-Blake McClimon)

Gerlach was born in 1991 and grew up in the area. In his early 20s, he immersed himself in the local music scene. He held jobs as a forklift operator and a laser operator. After 2014, he stopped listing places of employment on his LinkedIn account.

Strangely, his music encompassed opposing themes: his faith and thoughts of isolation and self-loathing. His Twitter posts reflect the same interests. A month before his 21st birthday, he wrote, “If I could describe myself with one phrase, it would be washed up, good for nothing, meaningless piece of [expletive].”

In 2012, he wrote: “The work Christ has done in my life over the past week blows my mind. I never thought I could hold this much compassion.”

A year later, his thoughts strayed to isolation. He wrote: "Maybe I should end every human relationship I have and live in isolation out in the woods. Maybe THEN my mind would quiet down, andddd I’m back to the same emotional wreck I was. Wooo!!”

He performed locally under the name of Blind/Bird as a solo acoustic set. He also played with other bands.

In 2017, he released a 15-track album, "Finding Grace in Ghosts," on social media.

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Jeremy Pauley

Jeremy Pauley, who is presently serving time in federal prison for trafficking stolen human remains, posted a video connecting Gerlach to his wife, Sarah Pauley. He posted the video days before reporting to prison in January, 2026. 

In the video, he claimed that Gerlach helped Sarah Pauley sell property while he was under arrest. Sarah Pauley described the exchange as occurring via social media, where he helped her broker the sale of what she called "tribal artifacts" from a collection she shared with Jeremy Pauley. He brought the buyer to her home, where several items were sold. The sale occurred in late 2022 or early 2023, and since then, she had not spoken to Gerlach again. 

​On March 13, 2026, Friday the 13th, Gerlach did not appear in court as scheduled, and his lawyer asked for a three-week continuance, which was granted.

The following month, Gerlach waived his preliminary hearing. He is facing more than 500 state charges varying from theft and burglary to abuse of a corpse and desecration of a public monument. According to police, more than 100 human skulls, bones, and mummified hands and feet were found in his home, and in a storage unit he rented.  The corpses vary in age, and some date back at least 200 years.

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