Ep 122-A Horror Movie Come to Life: The Jonathan Gerlach Case

🚨 WARNING: This episode contains discussion of grave desecration, human remains, and disturbing crime scene details. Listener discretion is advised.
When volunteers at Pennsylvania's historic Mount Moriah Cemetery began discovering broken mausoleums and disturbed burial vaults, they had no idea they were uncovering one of the most bizarre criminal investigations in recent memory.
According to investigators, Jonathan Gerlach was caught inside the cemetery in January 2026 carrying human remains. What police allegedly discovered next shocked the nation: over 100 human skulls, bones, and mummified remains recovered from a home and storage unit, leading to more than 500 criminal charges.
In this episode of Hold My Sweet Tea Podcast, we dive into the haunting history of Mount Moriah Cemetery, the investigation that police called "a horror movie come to life," and the heartbreaking task of identifying remains that may have been buried for more than 200 years.
Was this a case of morbid obsession, illegal collecting, or something even darker?
Grab your sweet tea and settle in as we unravel one of the strangest true crime cases to make headlines in 2026.

courthousenews.com — March 2026 hearing update and charge information. 

NBC10 Philadelphia
nbcphiladelphia.com— Detailed reporting on the investigation, arrest, and search warrants. 

NBC10 Philadelphia
nbcphiladelphia.com — Updated court proceedings and charges. 

NBC10 Philadelphia
fox29.com — Court appearance and expanded charges. 

fox29.com — Court appearance and expanded charges. 
FOX 29 Philadelphia

Transcript

A Case That Sounds Impossible

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Y'all, today's story is one of those cases that sounds so unbelievable that if it were a movie script, people would probably say it was too over the top. We're talking about a man accused of stealing human remains from one of America's most historic cemeteries. Not one skull, not a few bones. Investigators say they recovered more than 100 sets of human remains connected to this case. And the details? Absolute nightmare fuel. So grab your tea, get comfortable, and let's get into it. Because today's story takes us to a forgotten cemetery, crumbling mausoleums, and an investigation that police described as a horror movie come to life. This is Hold My Sweet Tea!

Road Trip Chaos And Old Houses

SPEAKER_01 1:37

And I'm Pearl. And gosh dang it, if we aren't always talking about a man.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

I told Pearl I was gonna say man dissipation.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

But you know, not everybody thinks the way we do, so not everyone loves Rocky Horror Picture shows.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Which they should.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Right.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

But you know. It's not everybody's cup of tea. Or whiskey.

unknown 2:08

Right.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

We've seen a lot of ads for whiskey this week. Yeah. Like bill side of the road billboard signs. Tons of whiskey.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

We took a we took a small road trip, so yeah, small round road trip to drop my son off for work.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

Yeah. We drove for I calculated out it was 28 hours round trip.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

And the most interesting thing we saw was Bucky's. Yeah. We stopped five times at Bucky's. It just became the gas and pee place.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

It did. It was like perfectly placed. So, you know, gas, pee, snacks, beaver nuggets. Back on the road. Back on the road. But we did get we did get a little detour in like Louisville, Kentucky, which I must say was quite cute, except for those weird bridges.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Um, those weird bridges were something.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

But like they had so much road construction that the GPS like lost its freaking mind and was like, turn here. And no, we didn't need to turn here.

SPEAKER_01 3:20

Congratulations, you're in downtown.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

Right. But it was so pretty.

SPEAKER_01 3:24

It really was. Yeah. So it was a nice little refresher. Brown stones, which is really cool. They were really, really nice. Yeah. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

But we we made it.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

Y'all don't know that we love old houses.

SPEAKER_00 3:37

Yes, we do. We're constantly sending each other like, look at this Victorian. It looks haunted. Let's get it. And yeah, we're we're constantly looking at old houses. Mm-hmm. And I mean, being in New Orleans, the architecture here is just phenomenal.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Yeah. Spanish, French, God knows what else.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

But sometimes getting out of here and seeing things like the the brownstones and all that, that was gorgeous.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

Yeah. It's nice to see like the different stuff in different areas.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

It's really, really cool.

unknown 4:15

Yep.

Mount Moria Cemetery And Its History

SPEAKER_00 4:16

Well, we're also taking a little trip with today's story, though. Where are we going? Pennsylvania.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Yeah, we weren't there. We weren't there. We didn't go there.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

Close-ish, but not there. Yeah. So our our story actually begins at the Mount Maria Cemetery in Pennsylvania. And honestly, if you've ever seen photos of this place, it already looks like the setting of like a gothic novel, which I am there for 100%. It was founded in 1855. It spans hundreds of acres and contains the graves of soldiers from multiple American Wars, veterans from the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War. Like That's a lot of people. That's a lot of a lot of people in there. Like generations of families were laid to rest here. Massive stone mausoleums, family vaults, historic monuments, a place where history and memory like intersect. But by late 2025, something strange was happening. And I heard about this story on TikTok. It kind of blew up on there and people were talking about it. There was a lot, a lot of misinformation. Oh fun. So I have tried to dig all of the correct information out so I could uh put this episode out here. Because I'm like, well, that's not what the police report said that you just told on TikTok, but let's go.

Break Ins Signal Something Worse

SPEAKER_00 6:04

So volunteers from an organization called the Friends of Mount Mora Cemetery began discovering signs of break-ins. Mausoleum doors were damaged, vaults appeared to be disturbed, burial sites had been entered. At first, nobody understood like the scale of what was happening. I guess they kind of chalked it up to just people doing stupid vandalism stuff that they usually do. Yeah. Teenagers or young kids or you know, people in there just doing dumb stuff, which is usually what you would think of.

SPEAKER_01 6:46

I mean, it is he did do dumb stuff.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Yeah, he did do stumb stuff. But he worked alone. So investigators would soon discover that someone wasn't vandalizing graves, someone was allegedly taking the dead. Yeah. So in December of 2025, police received information that kind of changed everything about these tips and things that were coming in.

The Tip And The Online Bone Claims

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Um, according to investigators, a tipster claimed that a name a man named Jonathan Gerlich possessed human remains in his house.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Like, what do you want that in there for?

SPEAKER_00 7:36

So, like when I first heard this, immediately Ed Geen came to mind because he would go take human remains, women, from there and had them all over his house. But this one's like a little bit different because it's in the now, you know. And the allegations didn't stop there. Police reportedly learned of claims involving a partially decomposed corpse hanging in a basement. There were also allegations that uh human skulls may have been sold online to collectors. Now at this point investigators like still needed evidence, like a tip is not proof. But police began digging deeper. They examined vehicle records, phone data, social media activity, uh, you know, like placing him in different places. So they would match up with like, okay, well, this somebody reported that this grave had been messed with, and all of a sudden they can, you know, ping your phone and find out where you've been. According to court documents, investigators discovered online accounts allegedly connected the buying and selling of human bones. As detectives continued gathering information, they noticed something even more troubling. Evidence seemed to place Gerlich nearly near multiple cemetery burglaries. So then came January of 2026.

Caught During An Active Burglary

SPEAKER_00 9:28

And this is the moment that the investigation like really ramped up. According to police, officers arrived at the Mountmora Cemetery and they encountered Gerlich during an active burglary. Like, so I guess they were trying to like follow him a little bit to see if he was like, He got caught black-handed? Uh 100%. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

Let's be real here. Your hands are dirte.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

Yes. So, and and this wasn't like a search warrant. It wasn't months later arrest. Like, investigators caught him right there at the cemetery. And according to police reports, Gerlich was allegedly carrying a burlap sack. What was in that burlap sack, you ask? The mummified remains of two children.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Yeah. Also recovered were skulls and other human bones, so just things that he had picked out of there, but he had the actual whole bodies of two children in a sack. Right. Like, I I don't even know what I would do if I was that officer. Like, you you go into police training and they train you for certain things. They don't train you for that. Because you would think no human would actually go out and do something like that. But they're out there, they're among us. All over the place.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

I mean, is it really easier to go steal all this all this stuff and sell it? Yeah. Than it is to get an actual job?

SPEAKER_00 11:13

Like, yeah. And you're standing in like this historic cemetery looking at evidence that sounds like it belongs in a horror film. So police immediately arrested Gerlic. But the investigation was just beginning because investigators still had not searched his property. And what they found next would make national headlines.

Search Warrants And A House Of Remains

SPEAKER_00 11:39

The following day, authorities um executed search warrants at Jonathan's residence and a nearby storage unit. Because you know they always got a storage unit. Y'all. What they reported finding shocked even experienced investigators. There's a video that's circulating out there of some body cam footage, and it's gross. It's nasty. According to police, more than one hundred human remains were discovered. Skulls, bones, mummified hands, feet, partial remains, children, adults. Some of them were displayed openly. Some were like reportedly like hanging, like somebody said or had reported, he's got a body hanging in his basement. Um, others were arranged on shelves. At a press conference, prosecutors described the scene as a horror movie come to life. Investigators also discovered remains of like vastly different ages. So he wasn't like picky, he was just picking. He whatever he could get into, whatever he could like scurry himself into, like mausoleums and stuff, he was just grabbing and going. Others appeared significantly more recent. One reportedly still had a pacemaker attached.

SPEAKER_01 13:21

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

Yeah. Imagine like being a forensic team assigned to sort through that.

unknown 13:28

No thanks.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

Don't wanna. Right.

The Hard Work Of Reidentification

SPEAKER_00 13:32

But not only like identifying remains, but figuring out where each one came from, which families they belong to, and whether descendants could be located. Because if you got stuff from like the War of 1812, like yeah, that's gonna be a little difficult to figure out who that was and who they belonged to. Right. So one of the most heartbreaking um aspects of this case is that the victims are not just names, but a lot of them do remain unidentified. Investigators have had to comb through handwritten cemetery ledgers and historical records trying to determine where these individuals originally rested, trying to reconnect them with their histories, trying to notify families. And like we just said, some cases, some of those family lines may not like no longer exist. Right. And these people like survived wars, epidemics, economic depression, entire centuries of history. Yet their final resting places were allegedly violated, you know, after their death. This trial is still going on, so I keep saying allegedly. Um but cemeteries are supposed to be sacred grounds regarding regardless of like your beliefs, your religion, or whatever, you are supposed to be resting in peace, not being grave robbed and sold online to some sicko in another like part of the country because they want they couldn't go rob them themselves, so they're gonna buy like some human bones and a skull of a child or something.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

Which is disgusting.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

Like, what is wrong with you?

Evidence Trail And Hundreds Of Charges

SPEAKER_00 15:21

As investigators continue their work, they allegedly connected Garelick to additional incidents. One involved a damaged mausoleum, another in another Pennsylvania community. Evidence reportedly included discard like energy drink cans and cigarette butts. Investigators collected DNA and fingerprints evidence for analysis. Meanwhile, prosecutors filed charge after charge after charge. By March of 2026, Gerlick faced more than 500 criminal charges. Among them were a hundred counts of abuse of a corpse, a hundred counts of theft, dozens of burglary charges, dozens of desecrated desecration-related offenses. The legal proceedings are ongoing and like every defendant, Gerlich is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in court.

SPEAKER_01 16:31

I know that's the saying, but I honestly feel like it's the opposite.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

But they found they they had his DNA.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

Every person they arrest is assumed guilty until proven innocent. Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

It's not the other way around.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

You're not innocent until proven innocent.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

But like they said, he's he left trash behind, cigarette butts, monster energy drinks, all that stuff. It all has his DNA on it, on these, all these cemeteries.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

So they're, you know, they're still going through these body parts, and you know, you have like you were definitely there. Yeah, you were there. Why were you there? Why are these all these bones in your thing? But you're saying that you're you're innocent and you didn't do anything, bruh. Like it's gonna come around. Why are you wasting people's time?

SPEAKER_01 17:17

Yeah. There are people who are legitimately innocent of things.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:21

And get treated way worse than than this.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

So yeah, and and the hearing schedule for March was postponed after the defense attorneys requested additional time to review newly discovered information. But like this story is like far, far from over.

Motive Questions And The Goth Scene

SPEAKER_00 17:38

And Jonathan Gerlick was like in kind of the goth scene community, and he was um, he hung out with a bunch of musicians, he was a musician himself, and people were like, he was just this normal, like cool guy. But little did you know. My thing is was he doing this as a fetish thing? Like you Ed Geen did it as a thing because of his mother. It was, you know, he was trying to had mental health issues. Yeah, mental health issues. Like, what kind of mental health issues does Jonathan have? Is there something that triggered this? Or was it just out of pure like, I can make money off this on the internet, so that's what I'm gonna do.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

And maybe he he viewed this as a victimless crime because the people are dead, but that's not the case. Right. It really isn't.

Why This Feels Like A Deep Fear

SPEAKER_00 18:44

No. And cases like this, like fascinate people, like me and you, because they touch very old fear, not fear of death, but fear of what happens after death, I think. And fear that our memories, our histories, and our final resting places could be disturbed. So I don't think it's just about the stolen bones, but it's about the the violation of trust. Um, because these families trusted that their loved ones would remain undisturbed and that these burial places would protect the dead and nobody would come in there and like mess with them. So as investigators now face the enormous task of restoring dignity to people who can no longer speak for themselves. And as this case continues through the courts, um, we'll likely learn much more about how it happens, why it happened, and how many families were affected. But I mean, you're sitting there with over, like it's I think it's around 578 counts against you. That's a lot.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Yeah, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

Like, what were you thinking? Were you not thinking? I was gonna say, but I think like one thing is certain, like Mount Mora Cemetery will never be remembered solely for its his history again. It'll be the place where that guy went in and stole a bunch of bones and mummified children and just the bizarre, disturbing criminal investigations that's gonna go on. And it's become it's gonna become a place where people are gonna go because they're like, oh, we need to go see this place now because of this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

And I've like heard of grave robbing as far as like people going and stealing like jewelry and other things that are inside the casket, but never the whole ass dead person. Right.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

Like you're in there getting like great grandma's diamond ring and brooch and like, you know, some p uh platinum fillings that were in somebody's teeth back in the day, or something. You know, you're you're taking things that are are value that can be sold. I don't think bones should be that valuable where you're selling them online to people that are sick in the head because they want to buy human remains. Like it's just extremely disturbing. That it is. Like, I'm all for the gothic lifestyle, but that's not a gothic lifestyle. That's a I can go buy a a plastic skull from a store and put it in my house. That's different from actually going and buying a real human head and putting it in your house. For sure. Yes.

Updates Ahead And Listener Input

SPEAKER_00 21:46

So if you've heard anything about this case and and you want to add anything, like reach out to us, put it in the comments. We will um speak about it on the next episode.

SPEAKER_01 21:59

Yeah, I mean, we always like to have conversations about stuff we hear from everyone else.

SPEAKER_00 22:05

And this case is ongoing, so I will do an update episode, and whether it be a short one or maybe it'll be have a whole lot of information from the trial, and I'll just do a a secondary episode on it because I want to know the why, of course.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

That's what everyone wants to know.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

So hopefully we will get the why off of this case. We shall see. Yes, we shall. But do you know the why of why our ears are just so happy all the time?

SPEAKER_01 22:41

It's our theme music written by Patty Sazeta.

SPEAKER_00 22:46

It makes our ears happy, and we didn't have to go dig that up.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

No, sure didn't.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

She was like, ba-bam, here you go. We're like, we love it. Perfect. Thanks. Perfection.

SPEAKER_01 23:00

Yes.

How To Reach Us And Support

SPEAKER_01 23:01

So uh you can send over, like she said, you can use the send a text because we can respond to those now. Right. It has changed. You can send something over via email at holdmysweet teapodcast at gmail.com.

unknown 23:16

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

You can reach out on social media or write a comment under the episode wherever you're listening.

unknown 23:24

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

And we did get a comment. Um, I posted the the episode I did with the um the priest, the parishioner, and the killer on TikTok, and we got a comment, and somebody was like, Oh, I remember this one. So, like, comment on those TikTok posts. Yeah, we love it. And it helps us reach other people because the more you interact with us, even if it's just a quick like and a a a googly-eyed heart emoji, like it still helps. Yeah, it helps other people find us, and it takes like two seconds to do. Yep, yeah. And we appreciate it so much when y'all do those things.

Closing Thoughts And Stay Safe

SPEAKER_00 24:06

But as always, Hold My Sweet Tea is a drunken bee production. And you guys remember to stay safe out there, stay out of people's final resting places. And just because we're dipping doesn't mean you can't keep sipping. Bye.