(CNN) Pontiac, Michigan — For years, the payments went out of the woman’s bank account.
Nobody batted an eyelid. Bills were paid. And life went on as normal in the quiet neighborhood of Pontiac, Michigan.
Neighbors didn’t notice anything unusual. The woman traveled a lot, they said, and kept to herself. One of them mowed her grass to keep things looking tidy.
At some point, her bank account ran dry. The bills stopped being paid.
After its warnings went unanswered, the bank holding the mortgage foreclosed on the house, a common occurrence in a region hit hard by economic woes.
Still, nobody noticed what had happened inside the house. Nobody wondered out loud what had become of the owner.
Not until this week, when a worker sent by the bank to repair a hole in the roof made a grisly discovery.
The woman’s mummified body was sitting in the back seat of her car, parked in the garage. The key was halfway in the ignition.
Authorities say they believe the woman died at least six years ago. They’re still trying to figure out what happened.
“I’ve been doing this 37 years. Never seen anything like this before,” said Undersheriff Mike McCabe of Oakland County, just outside Detroit.
Rarely heard from
The woman, who the sheriff’s office believes to be Pia Farrenkopf, paid her bills from her bank account through auto-pay, according to McCabe. If she were still alive, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said, Farrenkopf would be 49 years old.
Neighbors said they didn’t know much about the woman, describing her as of German descent.
“She really kept to herself. We never really heard anything from her,” neighbor Caitlyn Talbot told CNN affiliate WXYZ.
Talbot said she wasn’t aware of anyone having seen the woman, who traveled a lot, in about six years.
“She was probably there for a couple of days, then she’d leave for a week, then she’d come back. Then she’d leave for a month and come back,” Talbot said.
McCabe says neighbors chalked up the woman’s absences to her returning to Germany for long periods of time.
According to the sheriff, Farrenkopf’s employer last saw her in September 2008.
Despite years without a living owner, the house was never broken into, Talbot said. And McCabe said one of the neighbors cut the grass for years.
Authorities told WXYZ that the house appears to have black mold inside, and that detectives entered the building Thursday wearing hazardous material suits.
Bouchard, the county sheriff, said Friday that there were few outward signs of anything awry. Her mail didn’t pile up, since the post office was collecting it. And nothing inside in her home or car pointed to a cause of death.
“Nothing remarkable (was) found in the home,” the sheriff said.
Cause of death undetermined
Police were dispatched to the house for a welfare check in 2007 after a neighbor reported not having seen the owner in a while. After seeing no signs of anything amiss, police went on their way, McCabe said.
While authorities believe the body is that of Farrenkopf, they will rely on dental records to positively identify her. Farrenkopf’s estranged sister has been contacted, according to the undersheriff.
Authorities are awaiting for a toxicology report, which will take four to six weeks, before determining the cause of death. The medical examiner found no signs of trauma to the body, McCabe said.
Dr. Bernardino Pacris, the county deputy medical examiner who conducted the autopsy, told the Detroit Free Press that the woman’s skin was still intact, but that the internal organs had decomposed.
Bouchard, the country sheriff, noted that her body was inside a closed vehicle inside a closed garage — and, thus, not exposed to outside air or other factors that might contribute to decomposition.
Pacris told the newspaper that during the mummification process, skin develops a parchment-like consistency and leathery texture. Finding a body in such a condition is unusual, he said, but “once in a while, we see this.”
Our glorious suburban existence, where no one knows your name and your neighbors don’t notice you’re dead for six years.
It tells much about our society.
Those people in the suburbs will be trying to figure out who their neighbors are when the power and water are down and roving gangs of freeshitters are rampaging through their communities. Of course, by then it will be too late as open armed conflict requires a certain level of cooperation and those in the burbs will have precious little time to figure it all out.
I was telling a neighbor just yesterday that he needed to do some basic prepping. “Why do you care?” he asked me. I told him that everyone that was prepared was one less problem that I had to worry about should anything ever happen.
Of course, I never talk doom to these people but just basic prepping should some “act of God” ever tear up our basic infrastructure.
A good way to get to know your neighbors is by trying to get them involved in some healthy activities. I’m constantly trying to get them out of their homes or to the gym. I’m sure they secretly hate me but I do not care.
” … that the woman’s skin was still intact, but that the internal organs had decomposed.” —- article
Damn, that sounds like an exact description of Nancy Pelosi.
” I told him that everyone that was prepared was one less problem that I had to worry about should anything ever happen.”
It is troubling how so many people could ignore that advice.
I lived in Peoria years ago and there was the ‘morton mummy’. a lady had her husband basically mummified supposedly by the dentist(i think) boyfriend and kept getting the social security and pension checks for several years. as i recall, she said she didn’t know he was dead , he just didn’t talk or eat much. yea right, I don’t think she was charged either as she was elderly and no foul play suspected from autopsy. she just needed the money to live on I guess, but then again how do you explain the boyfriend 😉
There was a case very much like this in MA about 10 years back- a woman’s bones were found in her kitchen, and neighbors had not seen her for 4 years. She had apparently died in her kitchen, and since the remains were reduced to bones, it was impossible to determine the cause.
There are millions of reclusive people like this in this country, with no known relatives or friends, who are unknown even on streets on which they’ve lived for decades. But, then, maybe that’s because the neighborhood has turned over a dozen times in 40 years, and there’s no one there who has been there for more than a couple of years. This is a very common situation in Corporate Transferee Ghetto suburbs like Naperville, IL, where a client of mine came home from vacation to find that his entire house had been moved out by a burglar in his absence. Only a sock and a hairpin remained. Why had not the neighbors noticed a moving van parked in front of his place? Because no one would notice a moving van in a suburb where no one knew anyone and where people moved in and out nearly every month.
Our excessive mobility has not only sundered communities, but is most likely a much bigger factor in breaking up marriages and families, than any other social trend of the past 65 years. For one thing, before WW2, you were much more likely to marry someone who you had known your entire life, the proverbial girl or boy next door, and the families of the couple probably knew each other for at least a couple of generations back. These days, you are much more likely to mate with someone who grew up 1000 miles away, in a totally different milieu, and who is many years older or younger than you. There is much less basis for trust, and less attachment Meanwhile, your extended family has probably scattered hither and yon over the past 50 years. Families that could, as little as 30 years ago, trace their families back 6 generations in their cities and even their neighborhoods, live in places 1000 miles from their nearest relatives, marry someone from far away, and have kids who have no idea of their cousins. Never mind old friends, and old friends of your parents and grandparents, or neighborly associations, or local businesses owned for the same family for 4 generations. Since WW2, more and more people have grown up with no particular attachment or loyalty to any particular place or group of people, and take transience for granted. Thus, they do not even try to form associations with neighbors, and often go to great effort to avoid them. Additionally, most of us were raised in a “mind your own business” ethic- in the neighborhoods in which I have lived in St Louis and Chicago alike, it is almost considered bad form to be too “forward” in trying to get to know your neighbors. You have to be around for a long time, at least 5 years, to feel at ease casually dropping in on someone just to see how she’s doing, or to see if the old guy upstairs needs help. And some people have much more of a knack for this than others, while others are very shy and reticent. The shy ones would have no problem in a community where their family had resided since, oh, 1875, but in some bedroom suburb sitting in a place that was a cornfield in 1975, or some 60 story downtown high rise where half the building turns over every year, a person like this will get lost in the shuffle.
The effect the shredding of our communities has on our families and marriages has never been properly studied, but I believe that it is probably a much more important factor than any of the usual bogeymen (or bogeywomen!!) that social critics usually trot out, such as feminism or “loose morals”. An old friend of mine has stayed with her husband of 40 years despite the complete lack of any romance between them for more than 30 years, simply because of old family loyalties that make the failure of their male-female relationship seem trivial. She may not be interested in him, but she and he are still committed to each other and would not think of divorce because they grew up together in the same small community, and their parents and grandparents grew up together their and were lifelong friends. They know each other’s siblings and cousins almost as well as they know each other. They understand each other in a way that would be impossible with someone who, after a couple of decades or more, still remains partly a stranger to you because you and he come from different backgrounds, grew up 2000 miles away from each other, and in a different time and, often, were raised in a different religion or ethic; and they also have a powerful incentive to stay together and look out for each other, in that two large stem families- a whole universe of siblings and cousins and nieces and nephews, would be affected by a split between them. Most of all though, while it may no longer be romantic at all, the relationship is cozy and reliable. This is also how people are in the Asian community here in Chicago- many of these people go back together countless generations in the old country, and half the clan has resettled here in Chicago, where they’ve all picked up exactly where they left off in their village in China. People from the same village in China will all move into the same apartment building or buy into the same townhouse complex here,and the youngsters marry people from families well known to their own natal families, often for 50 years or longer. Marriages are much more than just a romance between 2 people- they are alliances between clans. And nobody, even people who live alone, is unknown to his or her neighbors. Everyone is known to at least a dozen other people, and people get out and “shop” in the neighborhood just to see each other. The bakeries and tea rooms are always packed with groups of old men sitting around playing cards, and there are always groups of old women hanging out together in the little grocery stores.
Americans cherish their mobility, and staying in your old neighborhood or city has almost come to be seen as the mark of a loser. You’re supposed to be moving ever upward and onward, to a better house, a better neighborhood, a better city. We have seen this as a major social advance, never counting the cost, which is ruined cities, abandoned small towns,increasing numbers of blighted suburbs, and tens of millions of lonely, disconnected, “alienated” people.
And nobody cared. I come from a pretty lousy family – and have realized that MY family is the thing that matters. Without them, I’d be part of nobody’s life and just another somebody. The ties that bind boys and girls, the ties that bind. When I was younger I never gave much thought to those billboards (at least around here anyways) that say ‘be kind’ and ‘respect each other’ and on and on. And nobody cared – she had nothin’. Jack shit, less than jack shit. Hug and kiss ’em, tonight….right now. Fucking depressing. Your fiat, my fiat – just expensive toilet paper. I was talking to my daughter and removed myself to read/catch-up on this, that, or the other. Going back, good night all. Long live TPB.
*……….Werd up Chicago 999444……….*You write all those long comments yo’self?……… *Dat’s fine ass pimp-tight sheeit you spewing………. *You be one smart fucker wif uh pimp-tight analysis an’ pimp-tight insight………*
Certainly not the same situation but an old lady in my city disappeared during a big snowfall one day. They knew she was gone because the door was open and the mailman tried to check on her. The house was secured and an investigation started.
When the snow melted in the spring they found her. The snow had slid off the roof and buried her. Poor thing.
I_S
woman’s body found in storage after husband’s girlfriend stopped rental payment.
woman’s body found in shallow grave several feet from last known residence after several years.
at times folks do not even know the people living in their own home: wife’s boyfriend discovered when husband hears snoring coming from closet.
there for a while, the AV was the preferred dumping ground for bodies of people murdered in LA.
And to think of how her excellent credit score turned to shit once her bank account ran dry. What a waste.
Iska Waran says:
“And to think of how her excellent credit score turned to shit once her bank account ran dry.”
You give a bill collector your account number and they will collect forever, you can’t even close the account if they are billing it so they will drain it even if you are dead, leaving nothing for the kids.
“Her mail didn’t pile up, since the post office was collecting it.”
So it didn’t pile up at the Post Office? Six years worth of mail? C’mon.
Evidently she voted in 2010.
http://www.wxyz.com/home/news/state/voting-records-show-pontiac-woman-found-dead-in-garage-votes-two-years-after-death
“The Detroit Free Press reports voting records show Farrenkopf as voting in the November 2010 gubernatorial election. Officials say, however, that it may represent an administrative error.”
Hm mm.
Here’s another, found dead after three years. Nobody checked on her, but one neighbor did use her driveway.
http://www.news-press.com/story/news/local/cape-coral/2014/11/05/cape-coral-man-buys-foreclosed-home-finds-body-inside/18557093/