Smyrna couple ‘rescues’ human skeletons, hopes to build a church lined with bones

Editor’s Note: This story contains photographic depictions of adult and fetal human skeletal remains and may be upsetting to some readers.

Smyrna couple Sonya Cobb and Justin Capps have always been collectors. 

Capps has shelves full of thousands of green-tinted uranium glasses. Cobb, a registered nurse, owns several antique medical tools: a bloodletting knife, an orbitoclast used for “ice pick lobotomies” and several (unused) rectal dilators, which were sold in the 1930s as a snake oil cure for headaches, acne, anxiety and more. 

The couple’s collection of human remains is a recent development. 

It all began with Tyler, a genuine human skull. Cobb stumbled upon Tyler six years ago in Oddporium, a curiosity shop in Arden. It didn’t take much for Cobb to fall in love with the geriatric skull’s “little, one-toothed smile.” 

“I was working in hospice, and I dealt with the geriatric population,” Cobb said. “Every time I walked in, I’d stop and say hello to him. It made me sad that he was sitting in a store. I just felt like he needed to be in somebody’s home. He needed to be loved.”

Tyler wasn’t for sale, but when the owners temporarily closed Oddporium during the COVID-19 pandemic, they gifted him to Cobb and Capps.

Not long after, Capps — who happens to be a licensed minister — had a dream about a passage from The Bible. In Ezekiel, Chapter 39, human bones on a battlefield are marked with signage so they can be retrieved and given a final resting place. 

It was a revelation for Capps. He awoke with a mission: to “rescue” human skeletons and give them a new home. 

Capps promptly quit his job as a public safety officer and, with Cobb, founded The Ossuary, a 501(c)(3) and free “mom and pop museum” of human bones inside their home in Smyrna. 

Skeletons in the closet

Today, Tyler sits behind a glass case in the Cobb and Capps’ living room, surrounded by other human skulls and nine complete skeletons. 

Enter the couple’s home, and you’re immediately greeted with a cabinet holding a more than 6-foot-tall skeleton towering next to a 36-week fetal skeleton.

Enter the living room, and you’ll find “Morticia” in a mink stole standing side by side with “Gomez” in a shared cabinet. 

And if you make the mistake of setting your mug down on the coffee table, you’ll quickly find that its coffin shape isn’t just for show. Underneath the lid is a bone-dry specimen probably thirsty for a sip of your drink. 

These skeletons are aged between the late 1700s and the 1960s or ’70s, according to Capps. Each was originally purchased from a medical supply company. Some buyers used them in doctor’s offices and hospitals. Other buyers included centuries-old fraternal organizations, which use skeletons as “memento mori” — reminders of one’s mortality — in initiation rituals.

There is often a question of what to do with a skeleton when a fraternal lodge, hospital or doctor’s office closes. That’s how they end up on Facebook Marketplace, inside curiosity shops or as an heirloom gathering dust in an attic. 

That’s where The Ossuary comes in. Capps and Cobb have traveled throughout the northeastern United States connecting with donors more than happy to get rid of a skeleton in their closet. 

There are few or no legal restrictions on this practice in most states, in large part because Capps and Cobb have never purchased nor sold human skeletal remains. 

“These were someone’s mothers, brothers, fathers, cousins, that gave themselves for the advancement of science and education. They weren’t meant to be put on a shelf with a price tag on them,” Capps said.

Delaware has no legal restrictions on the sale of human skeletal remains originally acquired through medical means. It is, however, a misdemeanor to buy or sell remains that were unlawfully removed. 

Knowingly exhibiting human skeletal remains is also generally illegal in Delaware. The Ossuary’s exhibition is an exception because its bones were originally acquired from commercial biological supply houses or through medical means.

Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Skeletons

Whether it is ethical for The Ossuary to place these bones on display for the public to view, take pictures of and even touch is another question entirely, and one largely up to individual discretion.

The Mütter Museum in Philadelphia offers an alternative approach to exhibiting human remains. 

In August 2025, the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, which operates the museum, announced several changes to its collection of 6,500 remains following a two-year review. 

Namely, photography and videography is prohibited without express permission by the museum, and only if the material is used for educational purposes. 

In a press release, the museum also acknowledged the “scientific racism” historically involved in the production of genuine human skeletal models. 

As an example, India was the primary supplier of medical skeletons throughout the world until the country’s 1985 ban on the exportation of human bones, which first began under British colonial rule and intensified after a crackdown on grave robbing in the United Kingdom in 1832. 

Not all medical skeletons throughout history have come from willing donors. Many came from the red market, grave robbing and unclaimed bodies. 

“Human beings have a unique status in our collection,” said Erin McLeary, Senior Director of Collections and Research, in a press release. “These were once living people, or parts of living people, and they deserve the very highest level of respect and sensitivity in telling their stories.”

In line with that goal, the museum announced an initiative to identify the individual remains in its collection to integrate into guided tours, in-gallery resources and object labels. 

The Ossuary has not identified the remains in its collection. Capps said he has tried to connect with one anthropologist without success. 

“One of the things we always wanted to do is return these folks to their families if possible,” he added. 

However, Capps also expressed concern that said families or descendants would try to sell the bones instead of laying them to rest or keeping them as an heirloom. 

When it comes to ethics, Capps and Cobb believe they’re doing the right thing.

“We rescue them like the SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) does puppies and kittens,” Capps said. 

Church of bones

Some of The Ossuary’s “rescues” come in rough shape, like “Vanessa Cardui,” named after the painted lady butterfly because an artist had painted her sometime before she was donated to Capps and Cobb. Other skeletons have come in trash bags with many of their bones missing. Whenever possible, the couple tries to restore or rewire the skeletons.

Cobb uses a soothing tone whenever she welcomes a new skeleton into her home, much like one would with a new pet from the animal shelter.

“I basically have a talk with them and let them know, ‘You’re part of our family. You are welcome here in our home. However, you’re not going to haunt me, because you could have very well been still stuck in a closet somewhere,’” she said with a laugh.

Capps and Cobb said they haven’t experienced any paranormal activity, though they have had self-proclaimed psychic visitors who would disagree with that assessment. 

One of Cobb’s two daughters has heard things in the dead of night, but Capps insisted that it was only mice. 

The other daughter is currently in college and hopes to become a museum curator. Cobb and Capps hope she’ll take over the family business when they die.

The couple spends a lot of time pondering mortality — more so than ever after Capps was in a motorcycle accident in Dover last year. He temporarily lost the use of the right side of his body, broke both his hands and scapula and split his head open. 

“I almost became part of my own collection,” he said.

When Capps and Cobb do eventually perish, they want their skeletons arranged like the Lovers of Valdaro, the 6,000-year-old skeletons locked in an embrace. 

But in the meantime, Capps and Cobb will continue working toward their long-term objective.

“Our goal is to one day get a church, and we want to line the inside of the church with the bones,” Capps said. 

The idea is ripped straight from ossuaries like the Sedlec Ossuary, a Roman Catholic chapel in the Czech Republic made from the bones of around 40,000 human skeletons. (A lucky few got to be part of the bone chandelier in the entryway.)

Capps hopes for 20 or 30 acres on the Nanticoke River in Sussex County. But that’ll require quite a bit of funding that The Ossuary doesn’t have. 

“I’m trying to get established to the point that when I go to the federal government and say, ‘Hey, I’m doing one of the most unique things in the world. Give me grant money,’ they will,” Capps said. 

Cobb is on board with the vision.

“I’d like my house back,” she said with a laugh. 

Capps believes the church would be a valuable community resource and tourist attraction.

“A place people can come reflect, pay homage to life and death, get married, have a funeral,” he described. “I’d like to be open seven days a week and do church service on Sundays with all my skeletons around me.”