A Texas man has been charged with abuse of a corpse after he threw a bucket containing suspected human remains over a fence at the FBI’s Dallas field office and posted a video of it on YouTube, authorities said.
Michael Chadwick Fry, 41, was arrested Thursday and charged with two counts of abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence, the Bartonville Police Department said in a news release.
The investigation began March 16 when a Bartonville police officer responded to a call from Fry’s mother, who said he asked her for money to pay for a U-Haul. When asked why, he said he “had a body that needed to be moved,” the probable cause affidavit said.
Fry then became “irate” and left the home, it said. Shortly afterward, the officer received information from Fry’s sister that he had “filmed himself on YouTube” at the Dallas FBI field office, the affidavit said.
The video showed Fry throwing a large, closed white bucket over the fence into the secure parking lot of the FBI building, according to the affidavit.
Fry claimed in the video he was trying to compel the FBI to intervene “in what he describes as wrongdoing by Denton County officials from a past arrest,” the affidavit said. It’s not clear what the alleged wrongdoing was.
An FBI special agent said “the bucket contained numerous bones” that appeared to be human, per the affidavit. The bones are awaiting further forensic analysis.
Fry had also posted another video on YouTube that showed what appeared to be a human skull at his Denton County home.
The mother told police that she found in her vehicle’s GPS history three searches for cemeteries — one in Arlington, Texas, and two in Oklahoma City. She also said that she found a shovel that was never at the residence before and that her son had started to lock the shed in the back of the home, which he didn’t do previously, the affidavit said.
In the investigation by Bartonville police and FBI agents, Fry was found to have posted videos online showing separate human remains and an urn of ashes, authorities said.
Investigators later determined that Fry had stolen an urn containing human remains from a cemetery in Oklahoma City — which was the subject of an Oklahoma City police investigation in February, according to Bartonville police.
FBI agents also found evidence at a cemetery in Denton, Texas, “indicating that a coffin containing human remains had been removed from a mausoleum,” Bartonville police said.
Officials did not disclose whom the remains were of or why they believe Fry might have targeted them.
The case remains active, and next of kin have been notified, police said.
Fry remained in custody Sunday on a $30,000 surety bond, according to booking records. It’s not immediately clear whether he has retained a lawyer.
Fry had made headlines in the past for ramming a truck into a KDFW-TV building in downtown Dallas in 2018. In that case, police determined Fry was upset about a 2012 police shooting in Denton County that killed his friend. He apologized to the station during a court hearing, KDFW reported.