BARTONVILLE, TX — A North Texas man faces multiple felony charges after allegedly stealing human remains from cemeteries and throwing a bucket of bones over the FBI Dallas field office fence while filming the act for YouTube.
Michael Chadwick Fry, 41, was arrested Wednesday and charged with two counts of abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence with intent to impair a human corpse, according to Bartonville Police Department. The bizarre case began Monday when Fry’s mother called police after he requested money for a U-Haul rental, claiming he “had a body that needed to be moved.” Fry became irate and left before officers arrived, but FBI agents soon contacted local police with disturbing information about his activities at their Dallas facility.
Court documents reveal Fry posted a four-and-a-half-minute YouTube video titled “We send Elizabeth over the FBI fence to summon them by force” on a channel called “Fry and Berto news! Where we reveal mass killers.” The footage shows Fry speaking with someone behind a window at the FBI office, seeking what he called a “status check” on an investigation about “what happened to me and my dead family and friends.” After receiving a website and phone number for submitting tips, Fry appeared dissatisfied. “So there you have it, and stay tuned, because we’re about to throw some human remains over the fence and force the investigation, because I still can’t seem to get anyone to do their job,” Fry said in the video, wearing a T-shirt featuring a news article about a police shooting. He then retrieved a white bucket from his car trunk, hurled it over the FBI fence, and returned to his vehicle. “There’s more videos coming,” Fry promised viewers. “We’re going to take bones all over the place. I got more.”
FBI Dallas confirmed to police that the bucket contained human bones. Investigators also reviewed another video posted March 16 showing Fry displaying a human skull at his Bartonville home, referring to it as “Elizabeth Virginia Lyon.” Officials believe the skull is connected to the remains thrown at the FBI office, and DNA testing is underway to identify the bones. Fry’s mother told police she discovered GPS searches for three cemeteries on her car’s navigation system — one in Arlington, Texas, and two in Oklahoma City. She also noticed a new shovel at their home and said Fry had recently begun locking a shed behind the house. According to the arrest warrant affidavit, Fry’s sister contacted police about the YouTube video showing her brother throwing the bucket over the FBI fence.
Investigators determined Fry stole an urn containing human remains from a cemetery in Oklahoma City in February, where an active theft case was already underway. Federal agents also found evidence at Odd Fellows Cemetery in Denton indicating a coffin containing human remains had been removed from a damaged mausoleum. Denton County jail records show Fry has an extensive criminal history with at least 31 previous arrests dating back to 2003, including six assault charges, arson, making terroristic threats, and numerous drug and public intoxication offenses. This isn’t Fry’s first attention-grabbing incident — in 2018, he crashed a rented pickup truck into FOX4’s downtown Dallas newsroom during a morning broadcast, scattering thousands of papers with phrases like “high treason” and “witchery” related to a 2012 Denton County police shooting that killed his friend.
The 2018 incident saw Fry ram his vehicle into the television station and leave behind a suspicious orange duffel bag that prompted police to establish a perimeter and deploy the bomb squad. “He got out of the truck, ranting and throwing sheets of paper onto the sidewalk,” FOX4 reported. No one was injured in that incident, and police said Fry appeared to be seeking media attention while “mostly rambling.” He later apologized to the station during a court hearing. The documents he scattered were printed news reports about the 2012 shooting in which Denton County deputies killed a driver who had been ramming a police vehicle — Fry was a passenger in that vehicle.
Fry is currently held at Denton County Jail on $30,000 bond while authorities continue investigating the scope of his alleged grave robbing activities. The case has prompted a multi-agency response involving Bartonville police, FBI agents, and cemetery officials in Texas and Oklahoma as investigators work to determine how many burial sites may have been disturbed and identify all stolen remains.
