Transcript of Introducing... Strangely New

Your true crime episode will start in just a moment. This show is part of the Always True Crime Network of podcasts, and there's loads of investigative series to get stuck into. Like "Codename Badger," that tells the story of a family whose lives changed forever when a stranger arrived on their doorstep claiming that what they knew about their late husband and father was a lie. It's a tale of espionage and deception spanning 7 decades. Or "The Mystic and the Mare," takes you to a small French coastal town that plunged into chaos when the world discovers what happens when political power and supernatural forces collide. Set in an idyllic holiday destination, this case shatters the serenity of a small town. Search for Always True Crime and get your next true crime series lined up to play next. Your next true crime podcast is waiting for you after Project Mind Control. Listen to Strangely, the show that uncovers the world's most bizarre stories, from true crime to conspiracy theories and all the wonderfully weird in between. Journalist Luke Jones, who you'll know from the Pitcairn Trials, and true crime podcast legend Poppy Damon join forces to explore the overlooked oddities that deserve a deep dive.

From mysterious grave tampering in Pennsylvania in the USA to a bionic surgeon in Cornwall in the UK, These cases need to be heard to be believed. Listen to this story from Strangely that just gets weirder and weirder.

You're big into cemeteries. You've pitched a few cemetery spooky things.

It's true, it's true. I was— there's a— there was a London vampire story that was in a cemetery. A lot of my podcasts start off at a cemetery. I, I'm— for, for various reasons, because often if the person's dead, it's a good place to go and, uh, begin. So we're going to start at a cemetery on a winter's night It's called Mount Moriah Cemetery, like Mariah Carey, but not spelled that way. Moriah. Okay. Before you ask, I know where you're going with that, Luke.

I was going to ask.

And it's in Philadelphia and also spans into a place called Yeadon in Pennsylvania. And it's got—

So it's a big cemetery.

And it's got family plots, Revolutionary War soldiers. It's a kind of really amazing cemetery with big monuments. Mausoleums and kind of old tombstones. And this story takes place as recently as November last year when volunteers and police started to notice what appeared to be break-ins to some of the vaults. It wasn't just wear and tear. These were fully desecrated graves. And, you know, the volunteers like to maintain the sites. They thought this was very mysterious. And of course rumors start to circulate because grave robbers have a kind of mythical folklore kind of tale. But they almost couldn't believe it. Was it animals? Was it kids just messing around? But they thought that—

And this isn't somebody with a shovel trying to dig up a bit of earth and exhume a grave. These are sort of those big stones.

Exactly.

Mausoleum type things. And what, a sort of big stone door?

Doors open. Yeah. Rocks moved so that person been able to enter. And of course, you wouldn't know what was in there, so you don't know exactly what had been taken as well. But obviously very painful for families, you know, they want to go and visit their loved ones, and it, you know, these kind of break-ins are happening. And then there's a tip, as there often is, that comes into the police, and it was from someone who believed that a man named John Gerlach may be behind these break-ins. And the tipster had said that he had seen a partially decomposed corpse hanging in the basement of this gentleman's home.

Whoa! Hang on— This is what a great tip! Oh, there's this mystery about all of these half-open mausoleums in this thing? "Oh, I know who it is." "Oh, and also I've seen him in his basement!" Okay...

It's true. As tips go, it's pretty good. And then even more on-the-nose really, as tips go: They said, you should also check out this man's social media. This is someone who's not being secretive about it. The police have a look on his Instagram account of this man, Gerlach, and they say that they see posts about taxidermy, skeleton collecting, oddities, and allusions to a bone museum. Now, you should know upfront that none of these things in the state of Pennsylvania are illegal. It's not illegal to, for example, have human remains. but it is illegal to break into graves. That's important. Hang on.

So if I, here in London, had— I mean, I don't even know why you'd have human remains, but— if I had a relative's leg as a keepsake after they died, I couldn't really keep that, could I?

I don't know the law in England.

I just looked it up. But if you're preventing the lawful burial of—

Yes.

But there must be licenses.

I think as long as you— all the other laws are met, it's okay. So I think if you're right, if it was like a family plot and then you ended up, um, you know, in Greece for example, there's not enough gravesites, so they do actually clear them up, um, and people do kind of keep the, the remnants. So there's different rules in different places, but here they know that this, you know, they want to connect it to the break-ins. Is this this man who's just like got some weird taxidermy, or is this someone who's breaking and entering?

And the taxidermy was of animals?

Doesn't say. I think it was a sort of— it was, it was His social media was in order for people to purchase things. So I think there was some— it wasn't particularly clear what he was maybe alluding to, um, though, um, they will come back to the socials in due course. So they also hear— they also notice that there's a suspect leaving a hardware store in East Earl Township, Pennsylvania. And he's wearing— this is really funny because true crime followers will know that there's always this moment in the documentary where they find them shopping at a hardware store, and what he was purchasing was a headlamp What are you doing with all that rope? Literally, an LED rechargeable glow stick, gloves, and tools commonly used in burglaries. Now, actually, I said he was leaving the shop. They'd been stolen, and they, um, they thought that was rather mysterious as well, and they thought that he was behind that robbery. But you think if you're gonna, you know, use those tools, you'd think you'd just purchase them, although then that would be more directly linked to him. So maybe it was smart to steal them, um, because he wouldn't have the credit card bill that says Big Shovel.

Yeah, and then they look—

the downfall of many a killer, literally.

Then they look a little bit deeper and they see that he is a member of a human bones and skull selling group on Facebook, and they see that another, another member of that group said, 'Thanks Jonathan, really enjoyed that item you sold me.' So it's starting to look really suspicious.

Um, social media is horrible, isn't it? As millennials have ceded Facebook to older boomer generations, is this what they're getting up to on there? Is my question.

And you know what the funny thing is? When I made my first series, Murderabilia, it was about people who collected true crime objects. And there's a big market for serial killers' hair, paintings drawn by serial killers in prison. And it's ethically really ambiguous, right? Because if you're putting money in their commissary, you are essentially purchasing it. Though many places have laws that say criminals can't benefit from their crimes. They're called Son of Sam laws because the Son of Sam at one point was going to have a biopic and get quite a lot of money. And these laws came in to say, no, you can't be, you know, using your fame to, uh, to profit, uh, because it would really incentivize people to be major serial killers. So there's these groups who you should say have, you know, 5,000 members, some of them, you know, these are really popular underground worlds that that John Garlick was a— I said garlic, I mean Garlick, obviously.

Which you might need if you're traipsing around a cemetery at night. A load of garlic, absolutely. Um, wooden stake, all this.

So he also had a Cash App account which showed a photo of a person holding what appeared to be a human skull. And then they further looked at his vehicle and they could see that, um, he had driven in some of the locations where burglaries, you know, had taken place in the cemetery. So it's all not looking very good, and the police are doing all this work quietly at the end of last year. And in early January they make an arrest.

This year?

This year. So just only a few weeks ago.

I don't know why— I don't know why it's worse for being sort of more recent, but it's true, it is more disturbing.

And so they confront this suspect, John Gerlach. They had all this evidence against him. He's 34 years old, he's from Pennsylvania, and in fact they've been following him. And this is really beggars' belief, but they catch him leaving a cemetery, the cemetery, with a crowbar and a burlap sack. The burlap sack really gets me.

Well, did he have the sack over his shoulder, and was he sort of comedy creeping?

That's how I pictured it, doing the little, like, grave hop. And then this is really awful. So then they look inside the burlap sack, and there's mummified children's remains, skulls and bones.

Now, Now I feel bad about that.

I know, but let's hope these are sort of— I think they're long dead graves that he's sort of interested in. For them to be mummified and all of that, they often kind of historical bones and things. But he pretty quickly allegedly says to the police, look, I do mostly sell these online, but the vast majority of them are in my basement and in my storage unit. And so officers get a search warrant and they go to his basement. And one of the officers said— described the scene as a horror movie come to life. There were shelves covered in skeletal remains, corpses hanging from the ceiling, as that witness, uh, had described, and over 100 human bones and skulls in various states of preservation. Um, in fact, this detail really haunted me. There were even, like, pacemakers and other medical devices that you could see within the bodies.

Oh, so it's like the worst episode ever of Storage Hunters, you know, where they sort of all bid on an unclaimed storage unit. Imagine opening that and thinking sort of gold, and then it's—

it's true. For those who have not been blessed enough to watch Storage Hunters, it's people who buy blindly from storage units, and usually there's like, you know, maybe some nice paintings or, um, some pottery collection. You're right, if it was, it would be really the horror movie version if you landed with a bunch of decomposing bodies.

So, but actually, sorry, but the, but the lion's share of it you were saying was in his basement, not in his storage room?

Yes, exactly. So it's, it's a mixture of the two. He needed space clearly for so many items. Um, but what he was actually charged with, because, you know, as I say, possessing them isn't necessarily illegal, but he was charged with burglary, corpse abuse, theft of venerated objects, desecration, and a few others. And of course, all the local media has been kind of talking to the family members. Um, essentially, you know, they've been giving statements saying that they're absolutely horrified, that, you know, you want your loved ones to be laid to rest. Extra volunteer groups have, have sort of cropped up to, um, protect the area from now on. Um, and the hurt caused by— to, to family members obviously cannot be underestimated when these are very, like, sacred places where people say goodbye. So they— we've also seen that they've like really enhanced security, so they've put cameras in. There's like, you know, a real effort now to make sure this doesn't happen, because as it turns out, John Gerlach is part of this much wider community, and they worry that he is just one of many. And I was really interested in who this man actually was, and some of the local press has spoken to some of his friends, and you may or may not be surprised to know that he's slightly in the heavy metal community.

Um, and a former sort of friend and bandmate of his said, you know, he, he certainly had an interest in oddities, but that they'd never heard him talking about doing something like this. Um, there's big questions over whether the people purchasing them are going to face legal consequences, because in a way they're sort of inviting the crime to take place.

Because also, what is—

it's hard to decide what is worse, is it?

I mean, I guess it is the person who's going around desecrating these graves and stealing remains, but then also the weirdo who buys it online to do what with? Have it on a shelf?

Yeah.

Have it as some sort of creepy ornament?

I think that, and I think again, like, humans love strange, macabre objects like that. There's a long history of that. I mean, when there used to be public hangings, people would go with handkerchiefs and dip them in the blood and keep them. Or as I say, people keeping locks of hair of criminals, um, skulls of criminals, even famous crimes that take place. People want to preserve a bit of that history. So I think it does have a real legacy with that. And I think that there is the kind of satanic, um, heavy metal sometimes overlap in this world, in this, in this space.

Yeah.

Um, and would you like to take a guess how much a full skeleton can go for on one of these Facebook websites?

Great question. Full skeleton, um, with display box?

No display box.

No. Um, is it what, like a couple thousand dollars?

You can go for up to $7,000. So these—

which actually seems really low for a human corpse.

Yeah, but it— but it— on the other hand, you think like, who's got 7 grand just for this you know, when you could get a really good staged one. They want the real thing, the idea of living with the dead, um, as a kind of ghoulish thing. So yeah, um, that is a little bit about the community. And also we should say that grave robbing does have this kind of long legacy. There was a— there's a famous tale where grave robbing happened because cadavers used for medical, um, experiments suddenly had a great value in London. There was all the kind of public, um, anatomy exams and things, and there were some famous grave robbers involved in that. But, you know, in this instance, it is really just for the kind of online trade. Whether more laws will be brought in to kind of stop people grave robbing or to prevent this online sale is yet to be seen.

As you mentioned, you've done quite a bit looking at murderabilia. Um, what was the sort of strangest bit that you found? Was it— was the strangest item that someone had bought or sold or kept?

I have to say, I, I get the commission of paintings. You know, there's Charles Manson, um, music, and there's, uh, John Wayne He famously drew these kind of clowns, and he was a clown, and they're kind of amazing pieces of art. Those I kind of can understand. I think for me, hair and toenail clippings and things like that, I find harder to connect with, um, because that's sort of gross for anyone. But again, it's almost like putting an animal head on the wall, isn't it? It's like a physical piece of them that you're holding. Like pure evil, if you believe in evil, you're kind of keeping a piece of that in a box.

Yeah. But then I can sort of see— but then on the other end of the spectrum, you have, of course, in some churches, there will be the sacred remains of some saint. It might be their whole body. It might be a part of their body. But actually, of someone grim or unknown to you, but bought off the internet. Um, go out on a limb and say that's strange. Have you ever been— I mean, obviously you reported on this kind of thing, but have you ever seen or been near any of this stuff or been in any kind of gruesome—

Yes, we went to meet lots of collectors, and they want— the thing that was really creepy actually was there was a car owned by a serial killer in which he'd picked up sex workers and murdered them in that vehicle. And this gentleman called Paul that we spoke to had it in his garage, and he said he just liked to sit in it and get a creepy feeling while he sat where many people had lost their lives. And that was quite disturbing because it's quite a large piece, you know, a large item. Um, and, you know, I mean, I suppose you can go to the— what are they called— the catacombs in Paris and other places where you're kind of lined with skulls. So I guess part of the series, and maybe part of my interest that was drawn to this story, is like What is it that, you know, what's the— we kind of asked the question a bit provocatively, which is like, what's the difference between watching a true crime documentary and wanting to buy the car where someone's murdered? You're ultimately still consuming the true crime genre, you know, and putting money towards that industry or the industrial complex of true crime.

True crime industrial complex, of which we would like to know. I'm far too— yeah, like and subscribe. I am far too squeamish for all that kind of stuff. I've been to one autopsy. Really? But it was of a porpoise.

I thought you were going to say of a porpoise, and I was like, oh my God, Luke, we can't have this on the internet.

Porpoise. It was— I was at London Zoo doing something, and they do— how did we get here? They do autopsies on every single animal that dies at the London Zoo.

I had no idea.

To investigate how it died. So it could be a fly, it could be a giraffe. They will cut that thing open and have a look. And this one was a porpoise.

Wow.

And, um, yeah, it was like on this table open, and the guy was there like stringing all its insides out being, look at this here, you can tell from this that— that I was like, in the corner.

Oh my goodness.

Um, wouldn't recommend.

Oh my goodness.

Not a good day at the office for me, I'd say. So before we finish, just back to your man Gerlach. What is— what is happening with him now? This is quite recent, so it's not been in court yet. No, he's still just facing—

exactly. So he's being held in George W. Hill Correctional Facility on a million-dollar bail.

Um, I thought you said George W. Bush Correctional Facility then.

He faces— I mean, I obviously listed some of the main charges, but it's actually 574 criminal counts. And that's, you know, as I mentioned, 100 counts of abuse of a corpse, theft by unlawful taking, 100 counts, receiving stolen property, 100 counts, desecration of venerated objects, 26 counts. There is one other little tidbit detail. As part of the police investigation, Moore is eeking out. You know, there's this getting caught stealing from the hardware store, allegedly. There's the, um, tipster who said, you know, there's— I've seen some corpses in this guy's basement. There's his socials. But there was also the desecration referred to. Volunteers had seen things like he'd left energy drinks and cigarette butts. And so presumably they'll use DNA to link him to that. But it, it's sloppy criminal work, I should say. And one important factor is like this, this, um burial ground is, is quite historic and is really run by volunteers. So I think presumably a criminal might have thought they could try their luck because it's really no longer a kind of active functioning burial site, but it wasn't to be. And good police work and some good tips meant that they caught him.

And we'll have to see what happens at trial.

Just search Strangely wherever you get your podcast and line up your next listen. Want more true crime? This podcast and loads more are part of the Always True Crime Network. It's packed with box sets to binge and twisted tales you won't find anywhere else. Find your next podcast obsession at alwaystruecrime.com.