By MARK SCOLFORO

Bones and skulls visible in the back seat of a car near an abandoned cemetery on Philadelphia’s outskirts led police to a basement filled with body parts, which authorities say were horded by a man now accused of stealing about 100 sets of human remains.

Officers say a Tuesday night arrest culminated a monthslong investigation into break-ins at Mount Moriah Cemetery, where at least 26 mausoleums and vaults had been forced open since early November.

Investigators later searched the Ephrata home and storage unit of Jonathan Christ Gerlach, 34, and reported finding more than 100 human skulls, long bones, mummified hands and feet, two decomposing torsos and other skeletal items.

This undated photo released by the Delaware County District Attorneys’ Office shows Jonathan Gerlach. (Delaware County District Attorneys’ Office via AP)

“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,” Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse said.

Most were in the basement, authorities said, and they also recovered jewelry believed to be linked to the graves. In one case, a pacemaker was still attached.

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 had been looking into the string of burglaries when an investigator checked Gerlach’s vehicle plates and found he had been near Yeadon repeatedly during the period when the burglaries occurred. Police say the break-ins centered on sealed vaults and mausoleums containing older burials, which had been smashed open or had stonework damaged to reach the remains inside.

He was arrested as he walked back toward his car with a crowbar, police said, and a burlap bag in which officers found the mummified remains of two small children, three skulls and other bones.

Gerlach told investigators he took about 30 sets of human remains and showed them the graves he stole from, police said.

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“Given the enormity of what we are looking at and the sheer, utter lack of reasonable explanation, it’s difficult to say right now, at this juncture, exactly what took place. We’re trying to figure it out,” Rouse told reporters.

Gerlach was charged with 100 counts each of 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 $1 million bond. No lawyer was listed in court records. A message seeking comment was texted to a cellphone linked to him.

By JACQUES BILLEAUD and HANNAH SCHOENBAUM

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A complicated crime scene and uncooperative witnesses hindered Salt Lake City police efforts to investigate a shooting outside funeral services at a house of worship belonging to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

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The shooting in a church parking lot left two people dead and six injured, including five who remained hospitalized with police protection Thursday. Investigators say the shooting erupted from a dispute between people who knew each other and were attending a funeral. No arrests had been made as of mid-day Thursday, a day after the gunfire. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is widely known as the Mormon church. Authorities say they do not know whether the shooting was gang-related and that they are having trouble getting witnesses to cooperate.

“Our houses of worship are sacred, whatever the affiliation,” Salt Lake City Police Chief Brian Redd said Thursday morning. “We should all protect those spaces. We should all respect those spaces.” All the shooting victims were adults. At least three of the injured were in critical condition, police said. Vaea Tulikihihifo, 46, and Sione Vatuvei, 38, were identified as the two people killed.

Police said they do not believe the shooting was random or motivated by animus against Mormons.

The red brick church in the northwest Salt Lake City neighborhood mostly serves Tongan congregants and holds regular worship services in their native tongue, according to its website. Missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints first arrived in Tonga in the early 1890s, according to the church’s website. At first, the church had little success and the mission closed in 1897. But a decade later, missionaries opened a school in Neiafu, Tonga’s second-largest town, and began preaching across the islands. Dozens of other schools were started by missionaries and seven of them remain open. The church’s membership has grown to 68,000 and 175 congregations. “Since the 19th century, the church has had a really, really prominent place in Tongan society. Depending on who you ask, somewhere between one-third and two-thirds of everybody who lives in Tonga are members of the LDS church,” said Matthew Bowman, a Claremont Graduate University professor specializing in U.S. religious history. On Wednesday, residents from a housing complex next to the church flooded outside to help victims and console dozens of people who had been attending a funeral for a person whom police haven’t identified.

Brennan McIntire said he and his wife, Kenna, heard several loud gunshots from their apartment next to the church parking lot while watching TV. He jumped off the couch and ran outside in flip-flop sandals to see what happened.

“As soon as I came over, I see someone on the ground,” he said. “People are attending to him and crying and arguing.”

Kenna McIntire came outside soon after and was rattled at the sight of first responders lifting an unconscious woman into an ambulance while people huddled around and sobbed.

The couple said they hear gunshots in their neighborhood almost daily, but never right outside their door.

“It was really heartbreaking to hear and see,” Kenna McIntire said.

About 100 law enforcement vehicles were at the scene in the aftermath, and helicopters flew overhead. Neighbors huddled in blankets next to a taco truck, watching the officers work and waiting for updates.

Police said they were reviewing license plate readers and surveillance videos from nearby businesses in their search for suspects.

“This should never have happened outside a place of worship. This should never have happened outside a celebration of life,” Mayor Erin Mendenhall said.

The church, headquartered in Salt Lake City, was cooperating with law enforcement and said it was grateful for first responders’ quick efforts.

“We extend prayers for all who have been impacted by this tragedy and express deep concern that any sacred space intended for worship should be subjected to violence of any kind,” church spokesperson Sam Penrod said.

About half of Utah’s 3.5 million residents are members of the Mormon faith. Houses of worship like the one where the shooting occurred can be found tucked into neighborhoods around the city and state.

Mormons have been on heightened alert since four people were killed when a former Marine opened fire in one of their churches in Michigan in September and set it ablaze. The FBI found that he was motivated by “anti-religious beliefs” against Latter-day Saints.

This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Vaea Tulikihihifo’s last name, which had previously been misspelled by Salt Lake City Police Chief Brian Redd.

Billeaud reported from Phoenix. Associated Press writer Luis Andres Henao contributed from Princeton, New Jersey.

Gov. Tim Walz on Thursday authorized the Minnesota National Guard to be staged and ready should they be needed to assist local law enforcement with any unrest following the federal agent’s fatal shooting of a Minneapolis woman on Wednesday.

The Guard would be tasked with “protecting critical infrastructure and maintaining public safety,” according to a statement from the governor’s office.

Minnesota also is providing extra law enforcement resources in a response to aid local law enforcement, according to the governor’s office.

“The Minnesota State Patrol has mobilized 85 members of its Mobile Response Team to support law enforcement efforts in the Twin Cities,” the governor’s office said.

While Walz said protests have been peaceful so far, “out of an abundance of caution and in coordination with local officials,” the Guard is being readied.

“Minnesotans have met this moment,” Walz said, in a statement. “Thousands of people have peacefully made their voices heard. Minnesota: thank you. We saw powerful peace. We have every reason to believe that peace will hold.”

In comments earlier in the day Walz urged protesters to remain peaceful, saying that violence would give federal authorities the excuse to bring in more troops to Minnesota. State Department of Public Safety Commissioner Bob Jacobson echoed those statements, calling for peaceful, lawful protests.

Dozens of protesters gathered Thursday outside of a federal building on the edge of Minneapolis that is serving as a major base for the immigration crackdown. They chanted slogans against immigration officials.

On Wednesday Walz placed the Guard on notice that they may be called for service in the event of unrest. The notice was the first step that alerts 13,000 guard members that they may need to be called upon in the event of an emergency.

Walz’s executive order “authorizes the adjutant general to place National Guard personnel, equipment, and facilities on state active duty to coordinate and support public safety and security services in Minnesota,” according to the governor’s office.

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The National Guard would at in a support role, with its focus being protecting critical infrastructure and letting area law enforcement work on community safety and other tasks.

Walz called out the National Guard in May of 2020 after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked wide-spread riots and looting in Minneapolis and St. Paul. He received criticism in some quarters that it came too late.

By MELISSA GOLDIN

Misrepresented and fabricated images spread widely on social media in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of a Minneapolis woman, Renee Good, by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer on Wednesday.

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Soon after the shooting, photos emerged erroneously identified as showing the victim, a 37-year-old mother of three. Others were fabricated to falsely show the face of the officer involved or were misrepresented to say he had a Nazi tattoo. And an old video of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was said to show him speaking about the incident.

Here’s a closer look at the facts.

Images said to show the officer likely AI

CLAIM: Images show the ICE officer who shot Good without a mask at the scene of the shooting.

THE FACTS: This is false. The images were fabricated. They appear to be screenshots from a video of the shooting, as the background matches the location where it took place. But that footage never shows the officer without a mask.

Hany Farid, a digital forensics and misinformation expert at the University of California, Berkeley, said that the images appear to have been generated by AI and that they are unlikely to reflect what the officer looks like.

“We have previously studied the application of AI to ‘enhance’ facial images,” he said. “Under considerably more favorable conditions than in this example of the masked ICE agent, AI enhancement/reconstruction is not consistently reliable.”

He continued: “In this situation where half of the face is obscured, AI (or any other technique) is not, in my opinion, able to accurately reconstruct the facial identity.”

Victim falsely identified in photos

CLAIM: Two photos of a blond woman with a small child show Good.

THE FACTS: False. The photos are of Renee Paquette, a former WWE wrestler, and her daughter.

One photo shows Paquette kneeling on the ground while her daughter hugs her. She posted it to Instagram on International Women’s Day in 2023, writing that “raising a strong, independent, free thinking, confident woman is my main objective.” The other photo shows Paquette kissing her daughter’s cheek as her daughter sticks out her tongue. It was posted in 2024, on her daughter’s third birthday.

Paquette commented on one of the posts misrepresenting her photos: “Wrong Renée. My condolences to her family.”

___

CLAIM: A photo of a woman with short, pale pink hair wearing a green sweater shows Good.

THE FACTS: False. The woman in the photo is not Good, it is Gabriela Szczepankiewicz. Photos of both women appeared in a 2020 Facebook post from Old Dominion University announcing the winners of a poetry prize.

Szczepankiewicz earned an honorable mention in the undergraduate category for that year’s Academy of American Poets Prize. Her photo, which is captioned with her name, is the first to appear in the Facebook post.

Good — who is identified as Renee Macklin in her photo — won the undergraduate category. Her photo appears third.

Photo of man with tattoo is not the officer involved in the shooting

CLAIM: An image of a man with a Nazi tattoo on his neck shows the ICE officer who shot Good.

THE FACTS: False. The image, which comes from a video posted to Instagram on Jan. 5 — two days before the shooting — is of a different man. Video of the shooting shows that the ICE officer involved does not have a tattoo in the same place as the man in the image spreading online.

In the Instagram video, a man behind the camera confronts the man with the tattoo outside of a restaurant on Lyndale Avenue South in Minneapolis. The tattoo is visible in the first few seconds of the video. It consists of two black lightning bolts that resemble the SS bolts symbol, which was used by the Nazi guard, and appears on the right side of the man’s neck, directly behind his earlobe.

The tattooed man says he “had this done years ago” and that he “ain’t had no time to change it” as he walks away.

In footage from the shooting, the ICE officer who shot Good is seen walking down the street about one minute in with a mask covering the bottom half of his face. He does not have a tattoo behind his right earlobe. In addition, his earlobe is shaped differently than that of the man in the Instagram video.

Video does not show Florida governor discussing the shooting

CLAIM: A video shows Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis defending Good.

THE FACTS: False. The video is from an interview DeSantis did in June on “The Rubin Report,” an online political talk show, amid protests that month over President Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles.

“And we also have a policy that if you’re driving on one of those streets and a mob comes and surrounds your vehicle and threatens you, you have a right to flee for your safety,” DeSantis, a Republican, says in the clip spreading online. “And so if you drive off and you hit one of these people, that’s their fault for impinging on you. You don’t have to sit there and just be a sitting duck and let the mob grab you out of your car and drag you through the streets. You have a right to defend yourself in Florida.”

DeSantis was not referring to Good. He was answering a question about Florida’s policies on protests that block roads.

Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.