FOLLOW US

Some warnings arrive as sirens. This one arrived as a smell.

For months, residents near South Chicago Chapel had been complaining to the city about a stench drifting from the funeral home's brick walls. On Thursday, investigators found out why: more than 50 bodies, in various stages of decomposition, improperly stored inside.

It is the second time in two years that a business run by Johanna and Clark Morgan has been shut down over allegations of mishandled human remains.

What Investigators Found

The Cook County Medical Examiner's Office said it was notified by state and local officials that bodies were being kept improperly at the facility, prompting investigators and forensic pathologists to be dispatched to the scene Thursday.

"Staff is assessing the conditions of the remains, searching for documentation regarding identification of the decedents as well as death certificates," the medical examiner's office said in a statement, adding that the process "could take several days" and that family notifications would follow positive identification.

Chicago police said Friday that an earlier department statement had incorrectly claimed the fire department declared the scene a hazardous materials incident. No arrests have been announced, but police said detectives are actively investigating.

Messages left for the funeral home by phone and through its website went unanswered Friday.

"I'm Discombobulated"

By Friday afternoon, a small crowd had gathered outside the funeral home — some residents, others simply searching for answers about loved ones whose remains had passed through its doors.

Latasha Johnson, 55, said her mother's funeral had been held at South Chicago Chapel just one day before authorities arrived. She later learned of the discovery and said she was told her mother's body would now require an autopsy, with identification expected to take another day or two.

"I'm discombobulated," Johnson said. "My heart is broken."

Blaise Von Bruchhaeuser, a community advocate for the neighborhood, said what troubled her most was the timeline — that complaints about the odor had circulated for months before anyone acted.

A License Suspended, a "Danger to Public Safety"

State business records show Johanna Morgan incorporated South Chicago Chapel Inc. in 2022. Her funeral director's license was temporarily suspended Wednesday — one day before the bodies were discovered.

The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation said the suspension followed "a finding that Respondent's continued practice is a danger to the public safety, interest and welfare," citing multiple decedents kept in an unrefrigerated area with "deplorable conditions including rodent infestation, causing decomposition and maggot infestation of the bodies."

Clark Morgan, identified in state records as Johanna Morgan's husband and the funeral home's president, is no stranger to regulatory action either. His funeral director license was revoked in 2024 for practicing with an expired license and for what the department described only as "unprofessional conduct."

The Same Couple, the Same Pattern

This is where the case stops looking like an isolated tragedy and starts looking like a pattern.

State Comptroller Susana Mendoza confirmed Friday that Johanna and Clark Morgan previously operated Heights Crematory in Chicago Heights, a facility whose license was revoked last year after authorities discovered improperly stored bodies — along with hundreds of cremated remains that had never been returned to grieving families.

"Horrified. Again," Mendoza said in a statement. "The discovery of decomposing remains waiting to be laid to rest this week at a South Side funeral home is heartbreaking and an abomination. These are people — someone's mother, father, sister, brother, child or friend, and they deserve better."

Both Morgans are named as defendants in Cook County court records tied to lawsuits stemming from the Heights Crematory case. Messages left Friday for the couple and for an attorney listed as their business agent went unreturned. Public records indicate the Morgans live in the Chicago suburb of Evergreen Park.

The question now facing investigators is one regulators may wish they had asked sooner: how a couple already stripped of one license to handle the dead was able to open another funeral business just miles away.

Part of a Troubling National Trend

South Chicago Chapel is not an outlier so much as the latest entry in a growing case file.

Last month, police in Pueblo, Colorado, arrested two men accused of mishandling at least two dozen decomposing bodies found behind a hidden door in a funeral home. In 2024, 18 bodies in various stages of decomposition were discovered at a funeral home in Georgia. The year before that, investigators in Colorado found nearly 200 decomposing bodies inside a single building, while 31 more were discovered at a funeral home in Indiana.

Four states. Three years. Hundreds of families left waiting for answers about remains that were supposed to have already been laid to rest.

For the families gathered outside South Chicago Chapel on Friday, the investigation is only beginning. The identifications, the autopsies, the accountability — all of it will take days, possibly longer. What has already been established is harder to undo: a couple regulators once removed from this line of work found their way back into it, and it took a neighborhood's complaints about a smell to bring the second collapse to light.