The remains of 57 people were recovered Thursday at a South Deering funeral home on Chicago’s Southeast Side, according to multiple law enforcement sources with knowledge of the investigation and a police report obtained by the Tribune.
In a statement late Thursday night, a spokesperson for the Cook County medical examiner’s office said that it sent investigators and forensic pathologists to the funeral home at 2939 E. 95th St. earlier in the day after state and city officials had notified the office of “decedents improperly stored” at the funeral home.
“The team has found more than 50 decedents in various states of decomposition at this time,” the statement said. “MEO staff is assessing the conditions of the remains, searching for documentation regarding identification of the decedents as well as death certificates. This process could take several days to ensure proper disposition.”
The statement said that office would work with authorities to identify the remains as quickly as possible and notify their families.
Earlier, a source told the Tribune that authorities had received a tip about the South Chicago Chapel in the 2900 block of East 95th Street and asked that South Chicago District (4th) police accompany them to an inspection.
According to the police incident report, officers met with a state regulator who told them a complaint filed Monday alleged remains were not being properly stored at or below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, in accordance with state regulations. The regulator said the business’ license was revoked Wednesday, the report stated.
During a walkthrough of the facility, the regulator and three officers encountered the remains of 57 people stored in different areas of the funeral home unrefrigerated, the report stated.
The police report said the “funeral director” initially told the officers that, per his attorney’s instructions, he would not allow police back into the business without a warrant. After police told him that a business license check could be performed at any time during business hours, The man locked the doors and left the scene, the report stated.
The report identified the funeral director as Clark Morgan, who previously held a funeral director and embalmer intern license before it was revoked by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation in 2024, records show.
According to the state agency, the registered funeral director for the business is actually his wife, Johanna Morgan.
Records available on the IDFPR’s website show regulators temporarily suspended Johanna Morgan’s funeral director and embalmer license Wednesday.
“Funeral director and embalmer license has been temporarily [suspended] due to a finding that Respondent’s continued practice is a danger to the public safety, interest and welfare due to Respondent allowing multiple decedents to be kept in an unrefrigerated area with deplorable conditions including rodent infestation, causing decomposition and maggot infestation of the bodies,” the records said.
“After learning of the situation at the funeral home, IDFPR alerted local agencies, and IDFPR investigators are working with them to ensure all appropriate regulatory and public‑safety steps are taken,” agency spokesman Steven Johnson said in an email to the Tribune late Thursday.
“IDFPR will continue to support ongoing local enforcement work, and it will take any additional regulatory action necessary to protect Illinois consumers and uphold the integrity of the funeral services profession,” he said.
According to the police report, Chicago Fire Department personnel responded to the scene and forced entry into the funeral home after Clark Morgan locked the door. A funeral for a 48-year-old man was taking place when authorities entered the building to conduct their inspection, the report states.
Near the facility Thursday evening, a squad car sat parked at the intersection of South Exchange Avenue and 95th Street, where police had blocked the road from South Escanaba Avenue to South Commercial Avenue.
At least two people could be seen walking along 95th Street with masks Thursday evening as the two back doors of South Chicago Chapel sat open. Several police sergeants and the officials from the city’s Department of Buildings were also on scene.
A Chicago police spokesman deferred questions to the Cook County medical examiner’s office. An Illinois State Police spokeswoman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Some neighbors told the Tribune that they’ve been smelling something akin to a dead animal in the area for around two months. The odor has been intermittent, neighbors said, but so potent that it made it difficult to go outside at times.
Neighbors Janice Skylas and Maria Paniagua stood down the street from the scene Thursday night and watched the police activity from about a block away.
Both Skylas and Paniagua, who have lived in the area for decades, said the funeral home had been active. The business had staged a funeral as recently as last week, Skylas, 80, recalled.
The funeral home opened about a couple of years ago, neighbors said. Skylas and Paniagua would often see funeral traffic line the street along Exchange. Neither of them had ever gone inside.
Paniagua, 53, said she thought she smelled something once but for the most part, hadn’t noticed anything was amiss. Skylas, who often does yard work outside, said she hadn’t “thought anything of it.” Rather, she just questioned how well the business had been kept up.
A couple weeks ago, they saw what appeared to be workers associated with the funeral home lay new white gravel outside of the business.
“But before that, it wasn’t a place I would take somebody,” Skylas said.
When Paniagua left her house Thursday morning around 11 a.m. CT, 95th Street had been open to traffic, she said. By the time she returned at around 11:45 a.m., the road was closed.
The South Chicago Chapel case adds another chapter to the Chicago area’s troubled history with the funeral home industry.
In 2025, a crematory in south suburban Chicago Heights owned by Clark Morgan was shut down by state officials after the remains of more than 100 bodies were found improperly stored, ABC 7 reported last year.
Morgan was found to be operating without a funeral director’s license, CBS reported.
More than 20 lawsuits were filed related to the Chicago Heights funeral home, records show. Those complaints have been consolidated into one still-pending case.
Morgan has faced several suits in recent years stemming from the funeral business.
In 2024, a carpeting contractor sued after Morgan didn’t pay him more than $9,000 owed for services. A judge found against Morgan the following year and ordered him to pay.
Last year, an employee of Morgan’s filed another lawsuit, also alleging that Morgan failed to pay him what was owed. Records show a judge last month found Morgan to be in contempt of court.
In July 2009, authorities revealed that workers at the historic Burr Oak Cemetery were reselling graves and dumping hundreds of old remains in an abandoned, weed-covered lot.
The discovery shocked the region’s Black community because of the cemetery’s special significance to African Americans. Burr Oak was the area’s first cemetery to allow blacks to be interred there, and countless African American families would bury relatives there over the years. The cemetery is home to Emmett Till, singing icon Dinah Washington and boxing great Ezzard Charles.
The former director of Burr Oak was sentenced to 12 years in prison for her role in the macabre scheme reselling occupied burial plots and dumping their first human remains in a hidden field.
The Chicago area’s history, however, is not an isolated one.
This week in the U.K., a funeral director who failed to bury or cremate people and gave bereaved relatives the ashes of strangers was sentenced to 20 years, according to media reports. Nearly 35 bodies and more than 100 sets of ashes were found by police raiding Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in Hull in March 2024.
In March, the owner of a Colorado funeral home was sentenced to 18 years in prison for mishandling nearly 190 dead bodies, cheating customers and defrauding the federal government through loan applications. Last June, her husband was sentenced to 18 years, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado.
Also in Colorado, in 2023, the operators of Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose, Colorado, were sentenced to federal prison for illegally selling body parts or entire bodies without the consent of the family of the deceased, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in Colorado.
Chicago Tribune’s Lauryn Azu, Jake Sheridan and Gregory Royal Pratt contributed.