By Lillie Davidson
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
DENTON, Texas — North Texas police arrested a man who stole a woman’s remains from a mausoleum at a Denton cemetery and then filmed himself throwing a bucket full of human bones over a fence at the FBI’s Dallas office, according to police statements and an arrest warrant.
Michael Chadwick Fry, 41, was arrested Wednesday, March 18, after Bartonville police received a tip about him removing the human remains from the cemetery, officials said.
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Bartonville police contacted the Denton Police Department and notified them that the remains recovered during the investigation may have been stolen from IOOF Cemetery in Denton, according to a statement from Denton police. After further investigation, police found the damaged mausoleum with the remains missing from inside it.
The investigation began when Fry’s mother called 911 after her son told her he needed money to pay for a U-Haul because he “had a body that needed to be moved,” according to an arrest warrant affidavit written by a Bartonville police officer. Fry’s mother said he became angry and left their house, and police put out a bulletin to neighboring law enforcement agencies to search for him.
A short time later, the Bartonville officer received information from Fry’s sister that Fry had recorded video of himself, which he posted to YouTube, at the Dallas Federal Bureau of Investigation Field Office. The video was titled, “We send Elizabeth over the FBI fence to summon them by force.”
In the video, Fry says he is trying to get the FBI’s attention by throwing “Elizabeth’s remains” over the fence in order to compel the FBI to intervene in what he describes as wrongdoing by Denton County officials related to a past arrest, according to the affidavit. The footage shows Fry throwing a closed, large white bucket over the fence into a secure parking lot at the FBI building.
An FBI special agent told Bartonville police that the bucket contained “numerous bones,” the affidavit states.
Another video on Fry’s YouTube account shows the suspect with a human skull at his home in Bartonville, the officer wrote in the warrant.
“In the video the skull appears to have dirt and hair still connected, along with leaves and other organic matter which appeared to be a real human skull ...” the officer wrote. “The Defendant calls this skull ‘Elizabeth Virginia Lyon.’”
Investigators determined that Fry separately stole an urn containing human ashes from a cemetery in Oklahoma City, which also was shown on video at his home, Bartonville police said in a news release. The Oklahoma City Police Department opened an active case in February related to that theft, police said.
Fry’s mother told police she found GPS data in the vehicle that her son drives showing he had searched for three cemeteries in Oklahoma and Arlington, Texas . She also noticed a new shovel at their home and said her son had started to lock a shed in the backyard, when he had never done before, according to the warrant.
Fry faces charges of two counts of abuse of a corpse and one count of tampering with evidence, according to jail records.. He remained in the Denton County Jail on Saturday, March 21. It’s unclear whether he has a defense attorney to represent him in the case.
Fry had previously been arrested in 2018 after crashing a truck into a building that houses the FOX 4-KDFW news station in downtown Dallas, according to KDFW. Fry got out of the truck ranting and throwing sheets of paper on the ground, and left behind an orange duffel bag that prompted police to call in the bomb squad, KDFW reported.
Officers later determined that Fry had been upset about a 2012 Denton County police shooting that killed his friend, and that Fry was “mostly rambling” and trying to get media attention, according to KDFW. In the 2012 incident, Fry was a passenger in a vehicle driven by Roberto Carlos Hernandez when Hernandez was accused of ramming a sheriff’s deputy’s car and was fatally shot by the deputy, WFAA-TV reported.
Fry has been arrested more than two dozen times since 2003, on a range of offenses including assault, burglary, driving with an invalid license, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct, according to court records.
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