14 DAY TRIAL // A man from Austria has the oddest passion – he collects human bones. He gets them where he can find them and, in this case, he removed them directly from graveyards.
He also sells the bones, which is how he was spotted by a police officer. A raid of his apartment revealed that he had 56 human skulls stashed there, as well as 55 bones originally pertaining to other parts of the human body.
The unidentified Austrian man was a hoarder, and he had all the human remains hidden in his residence, Austrian Times reports.
The only information which has been provided about his identity is that he is a resident of Oberwart in Burgenland.
Officers did some digging and traced the source to a nearby church. The grounds of the Maria Weinberg Parish Church include a funeral chapel and burial spots.
Police officer Wolfgang Bachkönig mentioned that the suspect tricked a church attendant to surrender the bones to him.
He claimed that he was a curator for an Oberwart museum who needed them for a special project. The clerk did not think that the claim was odd and he turned over the bones.
"One month ago the 47-year-old man contacted the sexton claiming he was on an official mission and needed the bones for a museum in Oberwart," Bachkönig says.
The church employee has not been charged as law enforcement officials believe that he was acting in good faith upon giving away the human remains.
"The sexton acted in good will and allowed the bones to be transported," Bachkönig explains.
He let the man inside a burial chamber, and the suspect left with bones dating back to the 17th century.
He was apprehended when he was selling the skulls and bones at a flea market in Kemeten, and he told the arresting officers that he was trying to conserve the bones.