# Fall River public pool (now with human corpse!) **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [July 1, 2011, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fall-river-public-pool-now-with-human-corpse/587545 "2011-07-01T19:30:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2011, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fall-river-public-pool-now-with-human-corpse/587545/21 "2011-07-01T23:30:19Z")
I mean, I seriously doubt you could pull up a several days dead body and confuse it for a just-croaked one, right? Although obviously it didn’t bloat and float. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2011, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fall-river-public-pool-now-with-human-corpse/587545/22 "2011-07-01T23:35:32Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > I believe this is because there are a lot of politically connected people who have “no show” “jobs” at these pools-and they want make sure these people “sign in” before they allow the records to be made public. Is this another **ralphFact[sup]TM[/sup]**? Got any evidence for your claim, or are you just going to leave your unsupported assertion hanging there, as usual? ---
**Author:** ![Baracus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/2bfe46/32.png) [@Baracus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baracus)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2011, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fall-river-public-pool-now-with-human-corpse/587545/23 "2011-07-01T23:48:13Z")
> [@LurkerInNJ](#): > > On the news, they said it was a state run pool with a permit that expired in December. They showed pictures of the pool and it looked nice, not at all like a place that would make you think “I could hide a body in there for days and no one would notice”. Well, in the picture of the pool [here](http://www.wral.com/lifestyles/image/9808442/?ref_id=9812261) you can barely see the woman’s leg only a couple feet under the water. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2011, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fall-river-public-pool-now-with-human-corpse/587545/24 "2011-07-01T23:52:50Z")
Now imagine her flat on the bottom in the deep end (12’). ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2011, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fall-river-public-pool-now-with-human-corpse/587545/25 "2011-07-02T00:09:03Z")
A body in the water for 2 days in the hot summer sun? That ain’t water–that’s a thin stew. ---
**Author:** ![voltaire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voltaire/32/313_2.png) [@voltaire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voltaire)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2011, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fall-river-public-pool-now-with-human-corpse/587545/26 "2011-07-02T00:13:46Z")
That must have been pretty traumatic for whoever it was that did eventually find the body, and I wonder who that was. Everybody responsible for cleaning that pool, and the lifeguards that day should be fired. If I was a parent, I wouldn’t want my kids going somewhere that would be allowed to happen. ---
**Author:** ![LurkerInNJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ed655f/32.png) [@LurkerInNJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LurkerInNJ)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2011, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fall-river-public-pool-now-with-human-corpse/587545/27 "2011-07-02T00:44:05Z")
> [@Baracus](#): > > Well, in the picture of the pool [here](http://www.wral.com/lifestyles/image/9808442/?ref_id=9812261) you can barely see the woman’s leg only a couple feet under the water. Wouldn’t sunlight reflecting off the water and the angle of the photo affect what could be seen in a photograph of a person in a pool? I think so. She may not have been easily visible at high noon, but there are lots of other hours and angles in a day. \*\*\* Now they are reporting \*The medical examiner’s office has determined the manner of her death to be accidental and the cause to be asphyxiation by drowning. The probe shows the water in the Fall River pool was murky from the time the pool opened for the season last Saturday. Visibility tests conducted Wednesday revealed a diver couldn’t be seen at a depth of 3½ to 4 feet below the surface of the water. - ---
**Author:** ![kittenblue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ba8739/32.png) [@kittenblue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kittenblue)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2011, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fall-river-public-pool-now-with-human-corpse/587545/28 "2011-07-02T01:39:14Z")
So did none of the pool personnel find her towel and her cellphone and whatever else she had with her that day after they closed up? I find it hard to understand why the friends she had come with figured she had just headed home on her own…surely she had put her stuff down next to theirs? And they were all given a ride there and were being picked up…was she truly such a “free-spirit” they would think she would just wander off on her own at a time like that? And why didn’t the nine year old keep insisting that she was in the water when the group was ready to leave and looked around for her? ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2011, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fall-river-public-pool-now-with-human-corpse/587545/29 "2011-07-02T02:11:19Z")
> [@kittenblue](#): > > So did none of the pool personnel find her towel and her cellphone and whatever else she had with her that day after they closed up? Theft, perhaps? ---
**Author:** ![Brown\_Eyed\_Girl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brown_eyed_girl/32/3574_2.png) [@Brown\_Eyed\_Girl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brown_Eyed_Girl)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2011, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fall-river-public-pool-now-with-human-corpse/587545/30 "2011-07-02T02:16:28Z")
> [@LurkerInNJ](#): > > The probe shows the water in the Fall River pool was murky from the time the pool opened for the season last Saturday. Visibility tests conducted Wednesday revealed a diver couldn’t be seen at a depth of 3½ to 4 feet below the surface of the water. :eek: That doesn’t sound good. What’s in the water that makes it so murky? Shouldn’t public pools have a standard of cleanliness that would preclude perpetual murkiness to that extent? I’ve never seen a pool that murky. I just don’t think I’d even go into a pool that didn’t appear clear. ---
**Author:** ![Brown\_Eyed\_Girl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brown_eyed_girl/32/3574_2.png) [@Brown\_Eyed\_Girl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brown_Eyed_Girl)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2011, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fall-river-public-pool-now-with-human-corpse/587545/31 "2011-07-02T02:28:06Z")
> [@Brown\_Eyed\_Girl](#): > > :eek: That doesn’t sound good. What’s in the water that makes it so murky? Shouldn’t public pools have a standard of cleanliness that would preclude perpetual murkiness to that extent? I’ve never seen a pool that murky. I just don’t think I’d even go into a pool that didn’t appear clear. Just [answered](http://www.deh.enr.state.nc.us/ehs/quality/wph.htm) my own question. So apparently too high pH causes water to go cloudy. What causes high pH? Well, one thing is swimmer waste. So swimmers were peeing like mad in the pool and the pool maintenance crew neglected to correct the pH imbalance. And other than the swimmer waste and dead body, the reason you don’t want to get into a cloudy pool is that high pH makes chlorine ineffective. So that comment by officials that swimmers needn’t worry about spending any time in missing lady stew because the pool was chlorinated: not entirely accurate. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2011, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fall-river-public-pool-now-with-human-corpse/587545/32 "2011-07-02T02:42:29Z")
There’s going to be a complete overhaul of the procedures to avoid anything like this happening in the future. From now on, the weekly check for dead bodies in the pool will be done on Mondays instead of Fridays. ---
**Author:** ![phouka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c5a1d2/32.png) [@phouka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phouka)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2011, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fall-river-public-pool-now-with-human-corpse/587545/33 "2011-07-02T02:54:22Z")
You know, unless that water was really, really cold, the lady should have been floating within a couple of hours. Bacteria in the intestine don’t stop when you die. They just start digesting you. That produces a lot of gas, and up pops the corpse. It’s why people who drown during the winter are so hard to recover. I can’t see the acidity of the pool changing that. Jiminy Cricket, people. If I’d swum in that pool after she’d gone missing, I think I’d have taken a steel brush and Lysol to my skin. ---
**Author:** ![Sal\_Ammoniac](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8dc957/32.png) [@Sal\_Ammoniac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sal_Ammoniac)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2011, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fall-river-public-pool-now-with-human-corpse/587545/34 "2011-07-02T03:25:49Z")
I’m the first to agree that this story is a compound of weird elements, that adds up to a whole lot of weird. But the murky water thing I have a bit of experience with. The other year, I took my kids to the local pool, also a DCR-managed pool, and was appalled to find that the water looked like mud soup. People were happily swimming, but I took the kids and left. I had never seen anything like it. And I’ll be the first to admit that the sapphire-blue pool is pure artifice, created by chlorine – but that look is so normative that it’s hard to believe that brown murk in a pool could be considered okay by a single soul. You can’t help thinking of a sewer. ---
**Author:** ![JoelUpchurch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f05b48/32.png) [@JoelUpchurch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoelUpchurch)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2011, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fall-river-public-pool-now-with-human-corpse/587545/35 "2011-07-02T03:30:57Z")
> [@Brown\_Eyed\_Girl](#): > > Just [answered](http://www.deh.enr.state.nc.us/ehs/quality/wph.htm) my own question. > > So apparently too high pH causes water to go cloudy. What causes high pH? Well, one thing is swimmer waste. So swimmers were peeing like mad in the pool and the pool maintenance crew neglected to correct the pH imbalance. > : The report I read was that the water was already murky when the pool opened for the season on June 26. I live in Orlando, so I don’t know what the procedure is up north, but would the pool have water in it year round or would it be drained in the off season? ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2011, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fall-river-public-pool-now-with-human-corpse/587545/36 "2011-07-02T05:16:41Z")
Another thing I find odd is that the news stated that they closed 30 pools so they could investigate. What possible reason do they have for closing 29 pools that didn’t have bodies in it while they look into the death? ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2011, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fall-river-public-pool-now-with-human-corpse/587545/37 "2011-07-02T05:24:15Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > Another thing I find odd is that the news stated that they closed 30 pools so they could investigate. What possible reason do they have for closing 29 pools that didn’t have bodies in it while they look into the death? For one thing, if Pool #1 was so murky that they couldn’t see a body, how would you know that the other pools _didn’t_ hide a body, too? ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2011, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fall-river-public-pool-now-with-human-corpse/587545/38 "2011-07-02T05:31:52Z")
Wait. It would seem that someone threw in the already dead body and little Joseph made his story up. I think. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2011, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fall-river-public-pool-now-with-human-corpse/587545/39 "2011-07-02T05:56:03Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > Is this another **ralphFact[sup]TM[/sup]**? > > Got any evidence for your claim, or are you just going to leave your unsupported assertion hanging there, as usual? Yep-there was just a scandal in the state department of escalator/elevator inspections. Seems a five year old fell through a gap, between the wall and an escalator landing, in a shopping mall in Worcester county. The union admitted that most of the inspectors did not know the regulations regarding this..and that the inspectors had approved this escalator for public use. So having no competent maintainence of the DCR pools does not surprise me. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2011, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fall-river-public-pool-now-with-human-corpse/587545/40 "2011-07-02T05:58:10Z")
I’m glad we finally know where they dumped Jimmy Hoffa. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fall-river-public-pool-now-with-human-corpse/587545.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fall-river-public-pool-now-with-human-corpse/587545.md?page=3)