Police received reports about a possible body months before Gregory Rohn’s remains were recovered from a Johnstown home and later linked to a criminal case.
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — Several 911 calls reporting a possible body in the attic of a Johnstown home came months before police ultimately entered the residence and found Gregory Rohn’s remains concealed there, according to court information that traces an investigation from early warnings to a later arrest.
The calls are one of several key points in a case that unfolded gradually rather than through a single police breakthrough. Rohn, 36, had already been reported missing when the calls were made in January 2024. Officers tried to contact people at the Adams Street property but did not recover a body at that time. Nearly six months after Rohn disappeared, police returned to the house, found his remains and began a longer investigation into who had placed them there. Angela Rice, 41, was ultimately charged with abuse of a corpse and arrested in New York in August 2026.
Rohn was last known to be moving through the Johnstown area in December 2023. His mother told investigators that she picked him up from the Cambria County Jail and later dropped him off. Rohn said he planned to visit a friend in the Old Conemaugh Borough area. When he did not return and could not be reached, his mother filed a missing-person report. Police began checking his recent contacts, including Rice, whose Adams Street residence emerged as one of the last places investigators could place him.
According to accounts of the criminal complaint, Rice told police that Rohn stayed at her home on Dec. 23, 2023. She said she left the next day to go to Hornerstown and that he was gone when she came back. Police had no publicly disclosed confirmation at that stage that Rohn was still inside the residence. His disappearance remained unresolved, and investigators continued trying to determine whether he had left voluntarily, met with someone else or encountered some other problem after leaving the house.
The first major warning about the property came the following month. Court documents cited by local outlets said police received several 911 calls between Jan. 15 and Jan. 17, 2024, alleging that a dead body was inside the attic. Officers reportedly went to the Adams Street residence at different times over four days and attempted to make contact. No one answered. The reports available publicly do not identify who placed the calls, whether the callers claimed to have seen the body themselves or what additional details they provided.
That gap in the public record makes it difficult to determine exactly what police knew during the January response. The available reporting does not say that officers entered the home during those visits, and it does not describe a search warrant or another legal process that resulted in an immediate search. What is clear is that Rohn remained missing after those calls. The house later became the scene of the discovery that confirmed he had died.
On June 29, 2024, police went back to the Adams Street residence for a welfare check. This time, officers encountered visible and environmental signs suggesting a death had occurred inside. They reported seeing numerous flies along the inside of a window and noticing a strong odor associated with decomposition. Firefighters helped authorities enter the property. Investigators moved through the house and into the third-floor area, where they found human remains wrapped in a tarp and concealed inside a crawl space or attic area.
The condition of the remains suggested they had been there for months. Cambria County Coroner Jeff Lees estimated that the person had been dead for five or six months. Much of the body had become skeletal. Investigators also described deterioration affecting the floor beneath the hiding place. The unusual location drew immediate attention. Detective Sgt. Cory Adams, an experienced Johnstown investigator, said the concealment differed from other death scenes he had handled. Lees said the manner in which the body had been wrapped and hidden made the circumstances suspicious.
Investigators still did not know immediately that the dead man was Rohn. Advanced decomposition prevented a straightforward visual identification. Dental records were used to compare the remains with the missing man. In August 2024, Lees confirmed that the body was Rohn’s. The discovery solved the question of his location but left investigators with two separate problems: determining what caused his death and determining who placed his body in the attic.
The first question proved difficult to answer. A forensic examination found no reported traumatic injury that established a clear cause of death. Fentanyl was detected, according to local reporting, but decomposition prevented toxicologists from determining a reliable concentration. Without that information, the coroner could not conclude that Rohn died from a fentanyl overdose. Lees classified the death as undetermined. That official finding remains more limited than the account police later said they received from witnesses.
The second question developed through interviews. During the continuing investigation, detectives said they spoke with people who described statements allegedly made by Rice about Rohn. One acquaintance told police that Rice said Rohn died after an apparent overdose and that she hid his body afterward. Other witnesses reportedly told investigators that Rice also discussed concealing Rohn inside the house. One statement attributed to her placed his body “in the walls in the attic,” according to reports describing the complaint.
Those statements helped police move from a suspicious death scene to a specific criminal allegation. Authorities charged Rice with abuse of a corpse under Pennsylvania law. The offense is a second-degree misdemeanor and applies to conduct involving a dead body that the person knows would outrage ordinary family sensibilities. The charge does not allege homicide and does not establish that Rice caused Rohn’s death. Prosecutors can pursue the concealment allegation separately from the unresolved medical question of why Rohn died.
Rice was not taken into custody immediately after investigators filed the charge. Police continued trying to locate her, and the case eventually extended beyond Pennsylvania. In August 2026, authorities found Rice in Schenectady, New York. Johnstown police and Cambria County detectives brought her back to Cambria County, where she was arraigned and lodged in jail. Reports listed bail at $200,000. A preliminary hearing was scheduled for Sept. 10 before Magisterial District Judge Brian Subich.
The sequence of events leaves the January 911 calls as an important but incompletely explained part of the investigation. Publicly available reports confirm that callers raised the possibility of a body in the attic and that officers attempted to contact someone at the residence. They do not establish the identities of those callers, the basis for their claims or whether police had enough information at the time to lawfully search the property. Those unanswered details make it inappropriate to assume why the remains were not recovered until June.
The later discovery nonetheless gave investigators physical confirmation that a body had been concealed in the location the earlier calls had referenced. From there, dental records connected the remains to Rohn, forensic testing showed the limits of what could still be determined about his death, and witness interviews produced statements that investigators said linked Rice to the concealment. The criminal charge emerged from that combined evidence rather than from the January calls alone.
No verified public material reviewed for this article shows that Rice has been charged with homicide or that Rohn’s cause of death has been changed from undetermined. The allegation against Rice remains focused on what happened to his body after death. The result of the preliminary hearing scheduled after her August 2026 arraignment also has not been reliably established in the available reporting.
The known record establishes that Rohn disappeared, police later found his remains concealed inside the Adams Street house, and investigators eventually charged Rice with abuse of a corpse. Questions about the precise circumstances of Rohn’s death and the full significance of the earlier 911 calls remain unresolved in the verified public record.
Author note: Last updated October 17, 2026.