Police in Hungary have arrested a 30-year-old man who investigators allege collected human body parts that he’d gathered from abandoned cemeteries and from his workplace at a hospital.
Hungary’s National Bureau of Investigation announced that the 30-year-old man from Budapest was arrested on suspicion of illegal use of human bodies.
“Throughout the search, the prepared human face, facial skin, bones stored in a suitcase, an entire lower leg, brain, hand, head, skulls and a heart were found from a jar,” Hungary’s National Bureau of Investigation wrote. “The last a part of the body remains to be investigated whether it’s human or animal origin, but beyond that, every seized stays can be examined by a forensic expert.”
The National Bureau of Investigation said that through the man’s interrogation, he said he was “particularly interested in human body parts, from which he had prepared food for himself and consumed them in various ways.”
Of their statement, police said the person is “keen about anatomy and pathology, and likes to dissect animals.” They believe he obtained the body parts through his work at a hospital and by digging up bodies “in abandoned cemeteries in Slovakia and Hungary,” based on The Associated Press.
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Police also seized the person’s computer, laptops, tablets, mobile phones, SIM and data cards.
The person is currently being held on suspicion of illegal use of human bodies.
This isn’t the primary time a situation like this has taken place.
In January, a Pennsylvania man was arrested and is facing greater than 500 charges after he was accused of stealing human skulls and “quite a few” skeletal stays from an abandoned cemetery on Philadelphia’s outskirts, based on police.
Bones and skulls visible within the back seat of a automotive near the cemetery led police to the house and storage unit of Jonathan Gerlach, 34, after police were looking right into a string of burglaries.
Investigators checked Gerlach’s licence plates and located that he had been near the cemetery repeatedly through the period when the burglaries occurred.
Officers said the Jan. 6 arrest culminated a months-long investigation into break-ins at Mount Moriah Cemetery, where not less than 26 mausoleums and vaults had been forced open since early November 2025.
After searching Gerlach’s home and storage unit, investigators reported finding greater than 100 human skulls, long bones, mummified hands and feet, two decomposing torsos and other skeletal items.
“Detectives walked right into a horror movie come to life in that home. It is actually, in essentially the most literal sense of the word, horrific. I grieve for individuals who are upset by this, who’re going through this, who are attempting to work out whether it is, actually, certainly one of their family members,” Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse said.
Police say Gerlach targeted mausoleums and underground vaults on the cemetery, which was established in 1855. Gerlach was arrested as he walked back toward his automotive with a crowbar, police said.
He was charged with 100 counts each of abuse of a corpse and receiving stolen property, together with multiple counts of desecrating a public monument, desecrating a venerated object, desecrating a historic burial place, burglary, trespassing and theft.
— with files from The Associated Press
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