# Man found in apartment 20 years after death **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 12, 2004, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-found-in-apartment-20-years-after-death/249969 "2004-06-12T14:10:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2004, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-found-in-apartment-20-years-after-death/249969/21 "2004-06-13T13:03:41Z")
> [@DMark](#): > > In West Hollywood, California - on the corner of Crescent Heights and Santa Monica Boulevard, there was a little house that I walked by every day. > > An elderly woman lived there alone. > > It seems someone broke into her house one night, put her in the closet and put a large dresser drawer in front of the closet and robbed her belongings. Most likely, the robber(s) figured someone would come looking for her, or she would get out eventually. > > Didn’t happen. > > Months later, the police were there and when I walked by on my way to work, I saw the door being taken out for evidence. Fingernail scratchings from where the old woman had tried to open the door without success. That sounds eerily familiar to an episode of _CSI: Vegas_. ---
**Author:** ![Biggirl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biggirl/32/3294_2.png) [@Biggirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biggirl)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2004, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-found-in-apartment-20-years-after-death/249969/22 "2004-06-13T13:15:36Z")
[At least he wasn’t admired as a beautiful work of art.](http://www.suntimes.co.za/2003/11/23/lifestyle/life17.asp) Look halfway down the page. ---
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2004, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-found-in-apartment-20-years-after-death/249969/23 "2004-06-13T13:21:10Z")
> [@danceswithcats](#): > > Source: Alicia A. Caldwell and Larry King INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS Talk about yer small world. I met Alicia A. Caldwell in an airport one night when we were all snowed in. Good solid reporter. Fetching, too. 😃 😃 What??? As for the O.P., it’s the squatting thing that makes me believe it all. He moved in when the building was in a fuzzy legal position, and it stood untouched for two decades. The fact that his children didn’t look is to me just so very sad. There’s estranged, then there’s " is Daddy alive?? ". Cartooniverse ---
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2004, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-found-in-apartment-20-years-after-death/249969/24 "2004-06-13T13:25:55Z")
> [@DMark](#): > > Fingernail scratchings from where the old woman had tried to open the door without success. [The Premature Burial](http://eserver.org/books/poe/premature_burial.html) by Edgar Allen Poe came to mind. Surely a nightmarish way to perish. ( full original text, but this is in public domain and so I feel comfortable with this link. Mods, if it’s still uncool to fully link text like that, remove the link? But, it’s from 1850 and I am guessing it’s safe ) ---
**Author:** ![groo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecd19e/32.png) [@groo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/groo)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2004, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-found-in-apartment-20-years-after-death/249969/25 "2004-06-13T13:52:13Z")
There’s a documentary about people who die alone (from the coroners’ point of view, I thnk) making the rounds on cable. It’s [A Certain Kind of Death](http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0342180/), and I watched about one minute before changing the channel. The first shot was a guy who’d died on his toilet, with the coroner estimating death by the infestation of maggots on his body. Yuck. ---
**Author:** ![Hal\_Briston](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a9a28c/32.png) [@Hal\_Briston](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hal_Briston)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2004, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-found-in-apartment-20-years-after-death/249969/26 "2004-06-13T14:00:08Z")
> [@danceswithcats](#): > > Without paying for the whole article, this is the best I can do as a cite from the Phila Inquirer such that my previous post wasn’t an urban legend: > Winning auction bidder finds body inside his new condo > > Source: Alicia A. Caldwell and Larry King INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS > Robert Milner won a sheriff’s auction last week, bidding $17,100 for a Warminster condominium that he had never seen, and went this weekend to check out his investment. He unlocked the front door, shoved it open, and found himself standing before a ragged heap of mail and papers. He looked to the left, saw a mummified corpse on the floor of the living room, and called police. The body, believed by investigators to be the condo’s former owner, Robert E. Barnett, 49, had > > Published on November 27, 2001, Page A01, Philadelphia Inquirer, The ¶ Some more choice selections from this article: > [@](#): > > The body, believed by investigators to be the condo’s former owner, Robert E. Barnett, 49, had apparently been there for nearly three years. Barnett, whom neighbors described yesterday as a recluse, hadn’t been seen since about October 1998. > … > Judy Kuhn, a postal carrier who said she had delivered mail to the condominium complex for seven years, said she notified her supervisor in late 1998 that mail had begun piling up and that a stench was emanating from the home. The post office, she said, alerted police. > … > Neighbor Jim Buczala, a 13-year resident, said of Barnett: “He was a hermit. I’ve never seen him. I saw that his [car] tires were low on air one day and full the next day - that was the only sign of change I saw.” > > More than two years ago, the registration on Barnett’s car expired, and Yorktown Village officials had the car towed. > > Steven Pullara, president of the Yorktown Village condominium owners’ association, and Buczala said that they and other neighbors called Warminster Township police several times over the years but that nothing was done. > > Township Police Chief James Gorczynski said investigators never had sufficient evidence to search Barnett’s house. > > “Based on the information we had back then, just based on the man’s history, it wasn’t abnormal that he wasn’t seen for a while,” Gorczynski said. “It wasn’t like the guy was seen every single day and then the guy disappeared.” > > Kuhn said she stopped delivering mail to the home in July after the Postal Service issued a stop order. “In the last four to six months is when I really saw evidence that no one was in there,” she said, including legal notices on his door. > … > Pullara said both the condo association and its management company, Smallow Management, had tried to track down Barnett since 1999, when his association fees went unpaid for the first time since he moved to the complex more than a decade ago. > > Barnett, who authorities say lived alone and had no family, seemingly ignored several notices about the back bills from both the county and the association, Pullara said. > > “As you can imagine, a lot of people tend to ignore those [tax] letters when they get them,” Watson said. > > Watson said county officials sent several certified letters to Barnett, warning that his home could be taken and sold at auction if the taxes were not paid. Kuhn said the letters were returned, stamped undeliverable, when Barnett did not come to the door to sign for them. > > Sometime between April and August of last year, Watson said, a sheriff’s deputy went to the home to contact Barnett directly. When no one answered, a notice was posted on the door, reiterating the warnings mentioned in the letters. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2004, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-found-in-apartment-20-years-after-death/249969/27 "2004-06-13T15:06:42Z")
> [@Johnny L.A.](#): > > Hm. I’ve often wondered how long it would take for someone to find my body after I died (unless I die in hospital, of course). I’m guessing that it would happen when the County Assessor decides to seize my house for nonpayment of taxes, or when the bank forecloses for nonpayment of the mortgage (assuming it’s not paid for by that time). How long does that take? 😕 Set up automatic payments from your bank account. If your SS is automatically deposited you could go a very long time. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2004, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-found-in-apartment-20-years-after-death/249969/28 "2004-06-13T15:17:07Z")
Heh. I do have automatic payments for the mortgage, and the taxes are included in the payment. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![AngelicGemma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/439d5e/32.png) [@AngelicGemma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AngelicGemma)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2004, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-found-in-apartment-20-years-after-death/249969/29 "2004-06-13T19:19:25Z")
> [@](#): > > none of his relatives ever asked police to search for him How very sad. ☹ [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-found-in-apartment-20-years-after-death/249969.md?page=1)