Angela Rice faces an abuse-of-corpse charge after investigators linked her to the concealment of Gregory Rohn’s remains in Johnstown.

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — A Pennsylvania woman accused of hiding a missing man’s body inside an attic crawl space was arrested more than two years after police found his badly decomposed remains in a Johnstown house, reviving a case that investigators had pursued across multiple states.

Angela Rice, 41, was taken into custody in Schenectady, New York, and returned to Cambria County in August 2026 to face a misdemeanor charge of abuse of a corpse, according to police and court information reported by local news organizations. The charge stems from the discovery of 36-year-old Gregory Rohn’s remains inside a residence on Adams Street in June 2024. Authorities have not publicly accused Rice of killing Rohn, and the available records do not show that she has been charged with homicide. The criminal allegation instead focuses on what investigators say happened to his body after his death.

The case began months before Rohn’s remains were found. His mother reported him missing in December 2023 after she picked him up from the Cambria County Jail and later dropped him off. According to a criminal complaint described in local reporting, Rohn told his mother that he intended to visit a friend in the Old Conemaugh Borough area. When he failed to return or contact his family, police entered him as a missing person and began trying to determine where he had gone. Investigators spoke with Rice during that early stage of the inquiry because Rohn had reportedly spent time at her Adams Street residence.

Rice initially told police that Rohn stayed at her home on Dec. 23, 2023, according to accounts of the complaint. She said she left the next morning to go to Hornerstown and that Rohn was gone when she returned. That statement placed Rohn at the same house where his remains would later be recovered, but it did not immediately tell investigators what had happened to him. For the next several months, he remained listed as missing while police, relatives and others continued looking for information about his whereabouts.

In January 2024, police received information that raised a much more troubling possibility. Court documents described by local news outlets said Johnstown police received several 911 calls between Jan. 15 and Jan. 17 reporting that a dead person might be inside the attic of the Adams Street house. Officers reportedly tried to make contact at the property several times over a four-day period but were unable to reach anyone. The publicly available accounts do not identify the callers or explain what information they had beyond the claim that a body was in the home. The records also do not establish that officers entered and searched the property during those visits.

The investigation changed dramatically on June 29, 2024, when police returned to the house for a welfare check. Officers reported seeing numerous flies on the inside of a window and detecting a strong odor associated with decomposition. Firefighters helped authorities enter the residence. Investigators searched the building and eventually reached a third-floor area, where they found human remains wrapped in a tarp and concealed in an attic or crawl space off a bedroom. Officials later said the body had been hidden in such a confined location that investigators considered the circumstances highly unusual.

Cambria County Coroner Jeff Lees estimated that the person had been dead for roughly five or six months by the time the remains were recovered. Decomposition was so advanced that much of the body had become skeletal. Investigators also reported that deterioration had affected the floor beneath the remains. Detective Sgt. Cory Adams of the Johnstown Police Department said he had handled numerous death investigations during his career but had not encountered a body concealed in quite the same manner. The condition and placement of the remains immediately became central to the inquiry.

Authorities could not identify the dead person visually because of the level of decomposition. Dental records eventually provided the answer. In August 2024, Lees announced that the remains had been identified as Rohn, ending the missing-person portion of the case while leaving the cause and circumstances of his death unresolved. A forensic examination did not reveal reported evidence of traumatic injury. Fentanyl was detected, according to local reporting, but investigators said the condition of the remains prevented toxicology testing from establishing a reliable concentration that could prove an overdose. Lees classified Rohn’s cause and manner of death as undetermined.

That finding created an important distinction between what forensic evidence could establish and what witnesses later told police. During the continuing investigation, authorities said people who knew Rice reported that she had discussed Rohn’s death and the concealment of his body. One acquaintance allegedly told investigators that Rice said Rohn died after an apparent overdose and that she then hid him. Other people also described statements attributed to Rice about concealing Rohn inside the house, according to accounts of the complaint. One reported statement referred to the body as being “in the walls in the attic.” Those accounts remain allegations rather than established findings.

Investigators used those statements, along with the circumstances in which Rohn’s remains were found, to pursue an abuse-of-corpse charge. Pennsylvania law makes it a crime to treat a dead body in a way the person knows would outrage ordinary family sensibilities. The offense filed against Rice is a second-degree misdemeanor. The statute addresses the treatment of a body after death and does not, by itself, establish responsibility for causing the death. That distinction is especially important in this case because officials have not publicly determined exactly how Rohn died.

Rice was not immediately arrested after the charge was filed. Authorities continued looking for her before locating her in Schenectady in August 2026. Johnstown police and Cambria County detectives returned her to Pennsylvania, where she was arraigned and placed in the Cambria County Prison. Local reports listed bail at $200,000, with one account describing a 10% requirement. A preliminary hearing was scheduled for Sept. 10 before Magisterial District Judge Brian Subich. Reliable public reporting reviewed in connection with the case does not establish the result of that scheduled hearing.

The arrest marked the latest stage in an investigation that stretched from Rohn’s disappearance in December 2023 through the recovery and identification of his remains in 2024, the collection of additional witness statements and the filing of a criminal charge. Much of the case has been shaped by what investigators could not determine. Months of decomposition complicated both identification and toxicology work, and the coroner did not establish a definitive cause of death. That left police to separate the question of how Rohn died from the question of whether someone improperly concealed his body afterward.

The available evidence described publicly therefore supports a narrower criminal allegation than the circumstances of the discovery might initially suggest. Police say Rice concealed Rohn’s remains, but the charge does not accuse her of causing his death. Witness statements concerning an overdose have not been confirmed as the official cause of death. Investigators previously indicated that the case remained open and that additional charges were possible if further evidence supported them, but no verified source reviewed for this article establishes that Rice has since been charged with killing Rohn.

Rohn’s death remains officially described as undetermined in the verified public record. Rice is accused of abuse of a corpse and is presumed innocent unless and until she is proven guilty in court. The most recent reliable reports confirm her return to Pennsylvania and arraignment, while the later disposition of the case has not been publicly established in the material reviewed.

Author note: Last updated October 17, 2026.