‘Palo Rituals’ Skulls Found in the Shed of Polk County Men Who Stole From Graves in Lake County Cemetery<\/a><\/blockquote><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\nLake detectives then met with and interviewed Tolentino, during which he confessed to going to the cemetery with another individual, 39-year-old Juan Burgos Lopez, of 5170 Timberlane Road in Lake Wales, and committing the crimes. <\/p>\n\n\n\nTolentino stated that Lopez used a crowbar to open the vaults and then removed the heads of the deceased. He stated they removed four heads from the four graves and then returned to Lopez\u2019s residence. He stated the heads were taken for religious practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery aligncenter columns-2 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\"><ul class=\"blocks-gallery-grid\"><li class=\"blocks-gallery-item\"><figure><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tampafp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/brian-heads.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"269\" height=\"282\" src=\"https:\/\/www.tampafp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/brian-heads.jpg\" alt=\"\" data-id=\"38255\" data-full-url=\"https:\/\/www.tampafp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/brian-heads.jpg\" data-link=\"https:\/\/www.tampafp.com\/removed-the-heads-of-deceased-two-polk-county-men-charged-in-stealing-veterans-remains-from-cemetary\/brian-heads\/\" class=\"wp-image-38255\" title=\"\"><\/a><figcaption class=\"blocks-gallery-item__caption\">Brian Montalvo Tolentino<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li><li class=\"blocks-gallery-item\"><figure><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tampafp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/juan.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"280\" height=\"269\" src=\"https:\/\/www.tampafp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/juan.jpg\" alt=\"\" data-id=\"38256\" data-full-url=\"https:\/\/www.tampafp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/juan.jpg\" data-link=\"https:\/\/www.tampafp.com\/removed-the-heads-of-deceased-two-polk-county-men-charged-in-stealing-veterans-remains-from-cemetary\/juan\/\" class=\"wp-image-38256\" title=\"\"><\/a><figcaption class=\"blocks-gallery-item__caption\">Juan Burgos Lopez<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li><\/ul><\/figure>\n\n\n\nPolk County Sheriff\u2019s detectives were then able to obtain and execute a search warrant for Lopez\u2019s residence last night in an effort to locate and recover any of the human remains. During the search, detectives located a total of six skulls, a hand, partial arm, and multiple other large bones within what appeared to be some sort of religious shrine. <\/p>\n\n\n\nLopez identified four skulls as being those obtained from the Edgewood Cemetery and stated the other two skulls were obtained from other practitioners. He also had an additional skull that he claimed was fake.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBoth men were arrested on the Lake County warrants by Polk sheriff\u2019s deputies and were transported to the Polk County Jail where they were booked in with bonds of $40,000 each. <\/p>\n\n\n\nBoth were charged with four counts of Disturbing the Contents of a Grave and four counts of Abuse of a Dead Human Body. Polk County Sheriff\u2019s Office may be adding criminal charges for their jurisdiction as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPolk County Sheriff Grady Judd will brief the media at 1:00 p.m. this afternoon and we will update this story. <\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"POLK COUNTY, Fla. – UPDATED STORY, CLICK HERE. Detectives with the Lake County Sheriff\u2019s Office have been investigating the thefts from gravesites at the Edgewood Cemetery since the incident occurred on December 6. At the time of the initial processing of the scene, crime scene investigators collected items (to include cigars) that were left and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38258,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tampafp.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tampafp.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tampafp.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tampafp.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tampafp.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tampafp.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tampafp.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tampafp.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tampafp.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tampafp.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}