$5M Bail For Man Charged With Stealing Mausoleum Doors In Bensalem

BENSALEM TOWNSHIP, PA — A Philadelphia man is being held on $5 million bail on charges for stealing bronze mausoleum doors from the Roosevelt Memorial Park and throughout the Philadelphia region, police said.

Sgt. Glenn Vandegrift said on Thursday that Michael Evangelist, 37, of Philadelphia, had an active warrant for his arrest for three thefts of bronze mausoleum doors in Roosevelt Memorial Park.

The thefts occurred in December 2024 and February 2025 and were valued at $8,000, Vandegrift said.

He said that Evangelist was in prison in Delaware for similar thefts.

Evangelist was recently transported from Delaware to Bucks County by the Bucks County Sheriff’s Department.

He was arraigned by District Justice Falcone on the Bensalem charges of theft by unlawful taking and sent to the Bucks County Correctional Facility on 10 percent of $5 million bail.

Evangelist is accused of stealing more than a dozen brass mausoleum doors worth more than $180,000 from cemeteries in Delaware, Pennsylvania, including Bucks and Montgomery counties, the Courier Times reported.

Evangelist allegedly cut up the doors, some in place for decades, and sold them to metal recycling and scrap businesses in Delaware and Philadelphia, the newspaper reported.

Bensalem Police opened the investigation the day after Christmas last year when they were called to the Roosevelt Memorial Park Cemetery on Old Lincoln Highway for a report of four doors stolen off two mausoleums.

The day before the second door theft was reported, police in Lower Southampton responded to Sunset Memorial Park on County Line Road for a report of two doors stolen off a mausoleum. The cemetery is four miles from Roosevelt Memorial, the Courier said.