discusses a family history of sexual abuse, violence, & the fact that there is a washer & dryer in the basement, & people have been in & out the whole time.
“WOODBRIDGE, N.J. - Sophia Taggert’s family reported the 56-year-old Woodbridge woman missing in March, but did not look for her in the house’s cluttered basement.”
—They’re a lackadaisical clan, those Taggerts. “Did you look in the basement?” “Nah. Too tired. I’ll check later.”
We have a large storage room in our basement, and I never go in there unless I am specifically looking for something I know is stored - it can be many months between times that I visit it.
What was the nosy relative doing down there, if the family rarely went down? If the father knew the wife was hanging down there, wouldn’t he have done anything to keep the relative from nosing around?
There was a local case here either early this year or late last year wherein a woman living in a trailer disappeared. Someone finally notified the cops, but they found nothing.
Someone finally got inside the trailer and noticed a smell and noted some sort of fluid leaking out from under a cabinet.
The cops showed up again in time to catch the son packing to leave. Upon searching, they found the woman’s body inside the cabinets, wrapped up in sheets, etc. The guy had killed her, wrapped her, stuffed her inside the island, and then tried to caulk up all the cracks to keep the smell from getting out.
When I was very small, my brother convinced me to stay out of the basement, because there were ghosts down there. A few days later, Mom told me to go downstairs to get something for her. I refused, shrinking back. “No, Mommy! There’s goats down there!”
That’s the way my family told it to me. I don’t directly remember any of it.
(1010 WINS) (NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J) The discovery of a missing woman’s skeletal remains in her Woodbridge home last week has spurred a review of the case by the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office, which will try to determine why the body was not found when police initially searched the home . . . Taggart, 55, was last seen March 10 as she walked to a nearby store. Township police searched her home that day and also brought in a search dog, but they never took the animal inside the one-story home.
Woodbridge Police Chief William Trenery said he has spoken with the officer who went into the 20-by-30 foot basement “and he says he never saw anybody down there.” The body was found hanging from a pipe attached to a water heater, and Trenery said it was “conceivable” that it was missed because the basement was nearly filled with numerous items, including boxes and an old motorcycle.
“The absence of stench was not remarkable considering the condition of the premises and certain physiological factors found at the site and during the autopsy.”
—Probably meant all the other corpses in the basement. “Oh, that hanging body? Well, no wonder we didn’t notice Mom, what with the crawlspace fulla Girl Scouts, Granny’s head in the washer, and all those Jehovah’s Witnesses stacked up like cordwood in the corner!”