More than 50 decomposing human bodies were discovered inside a Far South Side Chicago funeral home this week, stored without refrigeration in conditions investigators described as infested with rodents and maggots. The state of Illinois has suspended the funeral director's license. And here is the part that will make your jaw hit the floor: the family running this place already had another funeral facility shut down last year for doing essentially the same thing.
What Investigators Actually Found Inside South Chicago Chapel
Chicago police were spotted going in and out of South Chicago Chapel, located at the corner of 95th Street and Exchange Avenue, on Thursday evening. The Cook County Medical Examiner's Office confirmed it was notified by city and state officials about improperly stored bodies at the facility. Forensic pathologists who entered the building found more than 50 decedents in various states of decomposition.
The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation suspended the license of funeral director Johanna Morgan after determining that the facility's continued operation was, in their words, a danger to public safety, interest and welfare. The official records are not subtle about what triggered that finding: Morgan had been allowing multiple deceased people to remain in an unrefrigerated area where rodent infestation was actively causing decomposition and maggot infestation of the bodies.
Investigators were still working as of Thursday to assess the full scope of conditions and search for documentation to identify the victims, including death certificates. The medical examiner's office said that process could take several days. These are people's family members. Someone is waiting for a call that explains where their loved one actually is.
The Neighbor Who Knew Something Was Wrong For a Year
A neighbor who asked to be identified only as V told CBS News Chicago that she has lived directly behind South Chicago Chapel for about a year. She described a persistent, disturbing smell coming from the property the entire time.
"It just, like, stinks all the time. Like, it's so bad," she said. "I don't know, like a dead mouse. Like, it stinks."
She was not wrong about the dead mouse part. She was just dramatically underestimating the scale of what was producing that smell. A year. She smelled that for a year.
On Thursday evening, staff from Emmanuel Funeral Home and Cremation Services showed up at South Chicago Chapel to retrieve a body they had arranged to collect, completely unaware of the ongoing investigation. Pastor Christopher Jennings told CBS News Chicago they had spoken with the chapel earlier, were promised a callback that never came, and eventually decided to drive over to check on things themselves. "This is what we come to," he said. That is a sentence that deserves to sit alone for a moment.
The Part Where This Is Not the First Time
According to the Illinois Secretary of State's website, the active business license for South Chicago Chapel lists Clark Morgan, Johanna Morgan's husband, as president of the operation. Clark Morgan is not a stranger to this kind of scrutiny.
CBS News Chicago reports that Clark Morgan previously owned and operated Heights Crematory in Chicago Heights, which was shut down last year. The reason it was shut down: the mishandling of bodies of people who had recently died. The Illinois State Comptroller's office, which regulates the cremation industry, was conducting a probe when the crematory agreed to cease operations.
CBS News Chicago obtained photos from inside a trailer on the Heights Crematory property where bodies were being stored. The photos show deceased individuals partially wrapped in sheets or clear plastic bags, with faces and body parts exposed. There were also questions about storage areas at that facility operating without proper refrigeration.
So to be completely clear about the timeline: one facility with this family's name on it was caught mishandling bodies and forced to shut down. Then, apparently, the same family continued operating a second funeral home. Which is now also caught mishandling bodies. The owners did not respond to messages from CBS News Chicago.
How Does Any of This Keep Happening
Funeral homes operate in a space that most people do not think about until they desperately need one. You are grieving. You are overwhelmed. You hand your loved one over to a licensed professional and you trust that the machinery of state regulation is making sure that professional does what they are supposed to do.
That machinery apparently moved slowly enough that Clark Morgan could have one facility shut down for body mishandling, remain involved in a second licensed funeral home with his wife as the named director, and that second facility could accumulate more than 50 decomposing bodies before anyone intervened. The neighbor's nose figured it out before the regulators did.
Illinois does have a licensing and regulatory system for funeral directors. That system suspended Johanna Morgan's license. That is the system working. The question worth sitting with is how the system allowed a situation this severe to build for long enough that investigators needed forensic pathologists and multiple days just to count and identify the dead.
The Dingo Take
You are supposed to believe this is an isolated horror story, a rogue bad actor, a once-in-a-generation failure of an industry that is otherwise tightly regulated and trustworthy. Except the same family did a version of this before, at a different facility, in the same state, and the consequence was that one place closed while the other one apparently kept running until it hit 50 bodies.
There are grieving families in Chicago right now who trusted a licensed funeral home with someone they loved. They may have paid for services. They may have planned memorial events. They have no idea what has actually been happening inside that building. Some of them may be among the people waiting for a callback that never came. That is the human reality underneath the regulatory language about deplorable conditions and maggot infestations.
Clark and Johanna Morgan have not commented. Their lawyer, if they have one, is presumably earning whatever they are paying them right now. But the people whose family members were stored in an unrefrigerated room with rodents do not get to not comment. They have to live with whatever comes next, including the very real possibility that identifying their loved ones among more than 50 decomposing bodies is going to take days. Someone needs to answer for that. A suspended license is a start. It is not a finish.
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