CHICAGO — On Aug. 3, state investigators inspecting the notorious South Chicago Chapel were confronted with an overwhelming smell and a nightmarish scene.

In a ramshackle building, the temperature in one storage area rose to 88 degrees, as dozens of bodies decomposed, rats scurried around the area, and maggots covered some of the remains.

Public records obtained by the Chicago Tribune, as well as a newly filed city lawsuit, describe how bad conditions had gotten at the South Side funeral home before state and local officials intervened in the wake of the discovery of 56 decomposing bodies at the facility at 2939 E. 95th St. A Tribune investigation earlier this month showed how state agencies missed warning signs, leaving horrified family members to contemplate how their loved ones were treated with such little care.

The owners, Clark and Johanna Morgan, could not be reached for comment.

In a housing complaint filed Friday in Cook County Circuit Court, the city’s Department of Buildings charged a host of code violations against the funeral home, listing five pages of alleged dangerous, hazardous and unsanitary conditions that officials say overran the facility.

The lawsuit — along with a complaint filed by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation and an investigation report by the city’s Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection — offers new details on the decrepit environment at the funeral home, which has led to a criminal investigation and scrutiny over how the state regulates the funeral industry.

One body was found in a public washroom, according to the BACP report. And according to a complaint from IDFPR, Clark Morgan could not produce records that showed the chain of custody for many of the remains at the facility.

When Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation regulators arrived for their inspection of South Chicago Chapel on Aug. 3, they were met with “a strong odor of decomposition,” according to the IDFPR complaint.

They found 31 bodies kept in an unrefrigerated storage area, where the odor was “overwhelming” and the temperature registered at 88 degrees, the document said. They also found 18 bodies kept in a cold storage area.

Investigators saw maggots inside plastic body bags, rodent feces on the body bags and rats “scurrying” in an area where bodies were stored, the document said. Some of the bodies “were in an advanced stage of decomposition.”

In addition to those observations, the IDFPR complaint said Clark Morgan, who met them at the inspection, was unable to show any records showing the chain of custody for 30 of 49 bodies. Funeral directors are required to keep clear track of the identities of the remains and who has control over them. Asked why the department accounted for 49 bodies as opposed to 56, an IDFPR spokesperson said the complaint document was finalized before the medical examiner had completed a final count of the remains.

The IDFPR records obtained by the Tribune also shed additional light on the myriad licensing problems that Clark and Johanna Morgan had years prior to the discoveries at South Chicago Chapel earlier this month.

Johanna Morgan, according to a 2017 consent order, admitted to transporting a body across state lines in 2016 without the proper permits. She later “implemented additional checks and balances,” and she was fined $1,500 and reprimanded, according to the document.

Clark Morgan, who the Tribune previously reported had altered his funeral director intern license after it expired, used his altered license at least twice during removals from Northwestern Memorial Hospital between 2022 and 2023, according to another document from the department. The state revoked his license as part of the consent order in the case.

A spokesperson for Northwestern Medicine declined to comment.

On the afternoon of Aug. 6, officials arrived at South Chicago Chapel while a funeral was underway. Overnight and into the next morning, workers recovered more than four dozen bodies from the home.

Among the many city and state officials on site Aug. 6 were representatives from the city’s Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection, who reported encountering a “strong, foul, and putrid odor” at the building.

Their report, obtained by the Tribune through a public records request, documented “dozens of covered human remains on tables” throughout the building’s first floor, “several” bodies inside the funeral home’s preparation room and additional corpses in an attached garage-type area of the building. One of the deceased bodies “appeared to be missing a limb,” the report said. Another corpse was found “located inside a public washroom.”

While most business activity conducted within the city of Chicago requires a city business license, funeral homes are among the types of businesses that are generally exempt.

Funeral director and embalmer licenses are regulated by the IDFPR, and funeral homes are required to hold city business licenses only if they sell merchandise such as flowers or caskets. BACP officials did not issue any enforcement against South Chicago Chapel during their inspection because they found “no evidence of unlicensed sales activity,” the report said.

The city’s Department of Buildings, though, did take action against the Morgans in recent days in the lawsuit, which alleges 23 code violations in all. The complaint details the conditions the bodies were kept in, as well as the overall run-down nature of the building.

The complaint also names Midwest Group of Illinois as a defendant, calling the group the owner of the building. A representative for the Midwest Group said it sold the building in a contract sale to an LLC affiliated with the Morgans, who took control over the building in spring 2023. The property has not been fully paid off, the representative said.

In the rear storage room, 51 bodies were stacked in varying degrees of severe decay and decomposition, the complaint said. Half of those bodies were inside an insufficiently operating cooler while the other half were “strewn haphazardly throughout this storage area,” the complaint alleges. There were swarms of flies and numerous rats at, near or on the bodies.

“The stench was overwhelming and could be smelled outside of the building,” the complaint states, adding, “This is an immensely unsanitary situation.”

Other alleged violations include a lack of smoke and carbon monoxide detectors throughout the property, exit doors that did not open and mold-covered walls and ceilings in the garage storage area.

The complaint also alleges that the entire funeral home space, including the chapel and viewing rooms, was constructed without plans or permits. The lawsuit notes that, according to Department of Building records, the building was vacant in 2022.

City records show the department had not conducted a regular annual inspection at South Chicago Chapel since before Johanna Morgan incorporated the business with the Illinois secretary of state’s office in 2022. A representative for the Midwest Group told the Tribune the Morgans took control of the property in April 2023.

In a statement, the city’s Department of Buildings pointed a finger at what it described as a “division of regulatory authority,” noting that areas of the funeral home “used for back-of-house functions, such as the preparation, embalming, and storage of human remains” fall under the IDFPR’s jurisdiction, not the Department of Buildings’.

“A DOB annual inspection would not have covered these restricted areas and could not have revealed the tragic circumstances discovered within them,” the city department argued. The spokesperson also said that annual public place of assembly inspections conducted by the department “have shifted from annual to a priority-based process” because of “resource limitations.”

The city complaint is one of a number of legal issues the Morgans are facing.

A review of state and federal court records found the Morgans and the former Heights Crematory are defendants in nearly 60 still-pending lawsuits in Illinois and Indiana, all alleging improper handling of recently deceased persons whose families paid for cremation services.

The first lawsuit was filed in late April 2025 — more than a month before Heights Crematory was closed by state investigators. The suit alleged that another crematorium in northwest Indiana contracted with Heights Crematory to perform cremation services, but the agreements were voided when Heights Crematory failed to follow protocol for handling human remains.

“Rather than treat (the deceased’s) body with the dignity and respect required by industry standards, (the deceased’s) body was one of many that were improperly stored in sheets or bags with more than 100 other corpses in trailers by Heights,” the lawsuit alleged.

Records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show the Illinois comptroller’s office received more than 200 complaints related to the Morgans’ business operations between January 2024 and June 2025.

By July 2025, 32 lawsuits were filed on behalf of bereaved families in northwest Indiana whose loved ones’ services were subcontracted to Heights Crematory, records show. They all remain pending.

In August 2025, the Wisconsin-based insurance company that issued a policy to Heights Crematory filed a complaint for declaratory judgment in federal court in Chicago. The insurer argues that the policy “does not provide coverage to Defendants Heights Crematory, Inc., Clark Morgan, or Johanna Morgan for the claims asserted in any of the (Indiana) cases.”

The Morgans and Heights Crematory were named defendants in 25 more still-pending lawsuits filed in Cook County between May 2025 and June 2026, court records show.

Families are still dealing with the fallout from the discovery of bodies last month.

The remains of Timothy Murphy, 61, were among those found at South Chicago Chapel. Reached by phone, Rosalind Hawthorne-Murphy said she had been married to Timothy Murphy for eight years, after the couple met on a dating app and decided to get married after a year together.

“I loved everything about him,” Hawthorne-Murphy said. “He’s a loving husband, caring father, hard worker, a great person overall.”

Murphy worked as a custodian in the same south suburban school district for nearly two decades, and he got over a fear of airplanes to go on many trips with his wife, including to Florida, Dallas and Las Vegas, she said. When their aging parents were sick, he tended to them, she said.

Murphy had a stroke, saw his health decline and ended up in hospice care, Hawthorne-Murphy said. He died in July, she said.

Hawthorne-Murphy believed her husband would be cremated at Planet Green Cremations, a business that the state comptroller’s office has since described as an unregulated “storefront” associated with Johanna Morgan that contracted out to other crematories.

Hawthorne-Murphy said she was told it would take about two weeks to cremate her husband’s remains. After that timeline passed, she estimated she called the company dozens of times, asking for any update.

She had no idea his body was at South Chicago Chapel, even when she initially saw the funeral home in the news, she said.

“I was mortified. I was pissed off,” she said last week.

Hawthorne-Murphy finally picked up the ashes on Tuesday, she said. She still had not received a refund from the business where she believed her husband’s remains would be cremated, she said.

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(Chicago Tribune’s Tess Kenny contributed.)

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