Failed inspections, bodies parked on a suburban street — the troubled history behind South Chicago Chapel

The tax bills piled up for years on an Evergreen Park couple that ran a sprawling network of crematory and funeral services across the South Side and suburbs.

So did a series of professional disciplinary cases against Clark and Johanna Morgan, along with a bizarre run-in with police who found two bodies in the back of a minivan outside their home. And that was before authorities discovered dozens of mishandled corpses at their now-shuttered Chicago Heights crematory.

But none of those apparent red flags proved enough to prevent another gruesome discovery of 56 unrefrigerated, decomposing bodies this summer inside the couple’s South Chicago Chapel, a building that had its own troubled history with city inspectors long before the Morgans acquired it.

A WBEZ/Sun-Times review of public records underscores the tangled web of oversight responsibilities across multiple levels of government that officials are grappling with to prevent the emergence of another nightmare scenario in the state’s mortuary industry.

“Where you have multiple departments within the city and multiple governments that are responsible, routinely there’s a giant question of who’s actually in charge, because everybody tends to stick to their core mission and operational mandates and not coordinate well,” said former Chicago inspector general Joe Ferguson, who now leads the nonpartisan Civic Federation. “Somebody needs to be driving that bigger train.”

The case has prompted state lawmakers to reconsider arbitrary divisions of funeral industry regulation in Illinois, which is one of just four states that don’t conduct regular inspections of funeral homes.

Years of failed inspections

The property that houses South Chicago Chapel hadn’t been inspected by the city’s Buildings Department in the four years leading up to the discovery, the entire time the Morgans operated their business at 2939 E. 95th St.

City inspection records show that after 15 years of failing nearly every annual building department inspection from 2006 to 2021, annual inspections abruptly stopped in 2022. That’s the year South Chicago Chapel was created, a year before its owners bought the building.

When asked why annual inspections stopped in 2022, a Buildings Department spokesperson pointed to a fact sheet outlining the department’s apparent shift from annual inspections to a priority-based inspection process. The spokesperson added that the building department is only responsible for inspecting areas used for public assembly, such as funerals or wakes, not private embalming areas where the bodies were found.

“A DOB annual inspection would not have covered these restricted areas and could not have revealed the tragic circumstances discovered within them,” the spokesperson said.

But it’s clear from reports after the early August discovery that an inspector would not have had to enter an embalming room to know that something was terribly wrong.

“Upon entry, city and state officials encountered a strong, foul, and putrid odor consistent with decomposition of human remains throughout the building,” a Business Affairs and Consumer Protection report stated.

From 2006 to 2021, the property — which has long housed funeral homes — was receiving annual inspections and failed nearly every one. Half the time, it was because inspectors weren’t given access to the building, and because of small exterior violations. Other times, it was due to a series of minor violations inside.

In 2016, after multiple years of denied access to the building, the city took the building owners at the time, Midwest Group of Illinois, to court. Initially, the city raised the possibility of a receivership for the property, or demolishing it altogether, according to court records.

But the case was eventually dismissed after owners achieved “substantial compliance” with the city’s orders. The building failed six more inspections in the years that followed. A representative for Midwest Group told WBEZ/Sun-Times the property was “mostly vacant” for several years leading up to its sale in 2023.

It was sold to an entity managed by Clark Morgan, and property tax bills haven’t been paid since 2024, according to the Cook County treasurer’s office.

Ferguson said the building’s troubled history should have indicated a need for more attention, even after a change in ownership.

“At least an initial inspection — post-turnover of ownership — would have signified this is a carryover of an unacceptably long-term, non-compliance situation,” he said. “You would have wished somewhere in those three or four years there had been some form of inspection.”

But Ferguson pointed to a broader problem of understaffing and “unfunded mandates” citywide that he said are out of the building department’s control.

“The fact of the matter is they don’t have the resources they need, and what happens is, quite often, signals are overlooked, and it results in situations like this,” he said.

On Friday, the city filed a housing complaint in Cook County Circuit Court, alleging 23 different code violations at the property discovered during the August search, including the failure to keep the building “clean, sanitary, and safe.”

Run-ins with regulators, tax collectors and suburban police

Clark Morgan got a state license as a funeral director and embalmer intern in 1997, the year before his wife got her director and embalmer license. Under state law, interns are allowed to handle bodies under the supervision of a director/embalmer, who are also broadly authorized to “engage others who are not licensed.”

They both had their licenses suspended in 2017 after failing to file state income taxes. Johanna Morgan was also reprimanded and fined $1,500 that year for transporting “a decedent across state lines for burial prior to obtaining required permits,” Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR) records show.

The Illinois Department of Revenue has issued four tax liens on their Evergreen Park home since then, most recently earlier this year with more than $14,000 owed to the state.

Clark Morgan let his intern’s license expire in 2019 and then had it revoked completely in March 2024, a tumultuous year for the couple.

After IDFPR officials discovered Clark Morgan removed “at least two” bodies from Northwestern Memorial Hospital using a license with “an altered expiration date,” he was fined $10,000 and agreed to stop “engaging in the practice of funeral directing” in Illinois.

Johanna Morgan was fined $5,000 in the same month in 2024 for failing to complete and file three death records “in a timely manner” in 2020.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

A previous grisly discovery

Then in the overnight hours of June 13, 2024, an Evergreen Park police officer on patrol near the couple’s home in the 9400 block of South Avers stopped to check Clark Morgan’s minivan, which was double-parked, according to a report from the suburban police department.

The officer found two bodies inside and “a strong odor of what appeared to be rotting meat from within the vehicle,” the officer reported.

The couple came outside, with Clark explaining he had picked the bodies up from hospice care for cremation at their Chicago Heights crematory and “stopped at his house to go to the bathroom and grab something to drink quickly,” according to the police report.

Johanna Morgan “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 her and her husband are funeral directors,” the officer reported.

Johanna showed police “dispatch messages regarding a pickup” but told officers “she did not want to give out personal information of the deceased,” the report said.

After the officers pulled up the Morgans’ state license information online and perused Illinois’ funeral directing law, Johanna and her husband “were released from the scene to continue their work,” police said.

Officers followed up the next day with the Cook County medical examiner’s office, where an investigator said he had “filed numerous complaints against Heights Crematory for unprofessional practices” but explained hospice cases don’t go to the medical examiner’s office.

Johanna provided the names of the two dead individuals from the back of the van in a phone call with an officer the next day, and a hospice nurse told police she referred the person’s family to Planet Green Cremations, the report says, another venture of the Morgans.

Evergreen Park police closed the case after checking with the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, where a prosecutor said the case did “not meet any criminal requirements.”

“Clark did not go out of his way to stop at home as his home address is on the way from both residences. Johanna has an active license as a funeral director and embalmer. Therefore Clark can transport under the general supervision of a licensee that need not be immediate to a crematory,” the report said.

Crematory shutdown

A different set of regulators zeroed in on the couple the next year, when IDFPR received a February 2025 complaint about the Morgans’ operation at Heights Crematory. The agency referred the complaint to the Illinois comptroller’s office, which, in a quirk of state law, oversees crematories and cemeteries, while IDFPR regulates funeral directors.

Comptroller’s office investigators shut down the facility after finding dozens of bodies piled upon each other “in varying stages of decomposition, mummification, and not being stored in proper alternative containers,” records show.

At least 44 bodies were mishandled at Heights Crematory along with 504 sets of cremated remains, authorities said. As of mid-August, the medical examiner’s office was still trying to locate the families of 454 deceased people from the Chicago Heights case.

The episode prompted IDFPR officials to visit locations affiliated with the Morgans — including South Chicago Chapel in March 2025, “to investigate for potential unauthorized funeral directing activities,” according to Gov. JB Pritzker’s office.

Comptroller Susana Mendoza revoked Heights Crematory’s license in June 2025, but the Morgans admitted no wrongdoing as part of their consent order with the state.

Mendoza’s office “urged IDFPR to take away Johanna Morgan’s funeral license” due to the crematory’s troubling conditions, and referred the case to the state’s attorney’s office and the Illinois State Police to investigate potential criminal charges.

Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke’s office “recommended that ISP continue its investigation and consider the possibility of financial crimes,” according to a spokesperson. ISP officials earlier this month said their investigation was ongoing.

IDFPR officials visited South Chicago Chapel again Oct. 7, 2025, according to a timeline provided by Pritzker’s office.

“No serious concerns pertaining to the handling or storing of remains,” were identified, according to the governor’s office, but IDFPR filed formal disciplinary charges against Johanna Morgan three days later seeking permanent license revocation.

Agency officials wouldn’t say what prompted that visit or the charges, citing the ongoing disciplinary case that preceded the horrific discovery at South Chicago Chapel this August.