An Evergreen Park police officer was immediately suspicious in June 2024 when he found a Chrysler minivan with two canvas-wrapped, clearly decomposing corpses inside and a “horrible stench” wafting from within.
The typical family van — which bore no indication it belonged to a funeral home — was double-parked on a residential street at nearly 2 a.m.
The officer requested backup before he spoke with the vehicle’s registered owners at their nearby home: Clark and Johanna Morgan, whose handling of more than 50 decomposing corpses at a South Side funeral home has spawned a police investigation, generated international media attention and drawn scrutiny to state and local agencies responsible for regulating the funeral industry.
According to a police report obtained in a Freedom of Information request, the officer learned that while Clark Morgan’s funeral director license had been revoked, his wife, Johanna, had an active license. But they were still dubious enough about the discovery, and the couple’s “defensive” responses to their attempts at investigation, that officers spent hours the following day investigating, including reaching out to family members of the deceased and seeking advice from the Cook County state’s attorney’s office about whether charges should be filed.
Ultimately, the police investigation was closed and the Morgans faced no criminal charges in the matter. Asked about the case, the Cook County state’s attorney’s office referred to the police report.
But it’s yet another instance of the Morgans coming under scrutiny by law enforcement or a regulatory body with ultimately little or no consequences under a patchwork system that regulates the funeral home industry.
Less than a year later, the state comptroller shut down Heights Crematory, which they owned and operated. And just over a year after that, the Morgans landed back in the news after authorities found 56 decomposing corpses inside another one of their businesses, South Deering’s South Chicago Chapel.
Neither the Morgans nor an attorney who represents several of their businesses responded to phone and emailed requests for comment.
The first thing that caught the attention of the Evergreen Park police officer on patrol was a Chrysler minivan double-parked on the 9400 block of South Avers Avenue, apparently unattended.
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After running the plates and seeing the vehicle was registered to Clark Morgan, the officer went to inspect the Chrysler and “observed what appeared to be two human bodies deceased and laying down in the rear.”
The bodies were sealed in canvas, he wrote, similar to what authorities use in body removal situations. The officer smelled what he described as the scent of rotting meat.
“Through my training and experience as an officer, I believed this to be the smell of a human body going through decomposition,” he wrote.
He asked for more police to join him on the scene before he spoke to the Morgans, who came out of their house a few minutes later and told the cops Clark Morgan had stopped at the house to use the bathroom and get a drink of water. The couple told police they owned Heights Crematory, and showed them two sets of credentials: Johanna Morgan’s funeral director license and Clark Morgan’s funeral driver’s license.
The police report described the Morgans as “defensive with officers on scene.”
“Johanna was not cooperative with me and advised she didn’t think it was suspicious to have deceased bodies in the back of a van because (she) and her husband are funeral directors,” the report read.
Though she told cops that the bodies in the Chrysler had come from hospice care and showed them dispatch information on her phone, Johanna Morgan otherwise “refused to provide any other information pertaining to the deceased remains in their care.”
Police looked up the Morgan’s licensing information with the state department of Financial and Professional Regulation and found that Johanna Morgan had an active funeral director’s license and a canceled one, while Clark Morgan’s was revoked. They also saw that both of them were listed in state records as having been disciplined.
While speaking with the Cook County medical examiner’s office, they learned that the chief medical examiner had filed “numerous” complaints against Heights Crematory for what was described as unprofessional practices, according to the report.
Later that morning, an investigator sought advice from the felony review unit of the Cook County state’s attorney’s office and spoke to a prosecutor who noted no allegations of abuse or sexual activity with a corpse and said the event did not meet the threshold for criminal charges, according to the report.
Per an Illinois statute referenced in the report, a licensed funeral director may engage others under their supervision to help with remains.
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The prosecutor said Johanna Morgan had an active license which allowed her husband to transport the remains under her general supervision and noted that Clark Morgan did not “go out of his way” to stop at home, according to the report, because their home was on the way.
Evergreen Park police marked the investigation as closed.
The discovery of dozens of remains at South Chicago Chapel at 2939 E. 95th St. shocked and angered community members who used the services of the Morgans to put their loved ones to rest.
A spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation said it initiated expedited disciplinary proceedings, suspended Johanna Morgan’s funeral director license and notified law enforcement after receiving a complaint that sent police to the facilities on Aug. 6.
During a walkthrough of the facility, a state regulator and a group of officers encountered the remains of around 56 people stored in different areas of the funeral home unrefrigerated, a police report stated. Inside the funeral home, sources told the Tribune on Friday, police and other authorities encountered bodies on gurneys but also on shelves alongside equipment. Some of the bodies were not bagged, and some appeared to have severed limbs.
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.
More than two dozen lawsuits have been filed against Heights Crematory and the Morgans since state regulators closed the facility last year. Those complaints, alleging improper handling of remains, have since been consolidated.