An elderly woman has reportedly been living in her home for 20 years without noticing that her son’s dead body was inside the house.
A relative of New York woman Rita Wolfensohn went to her Brooklyn home to get some of her belongings to take them to her in hospital when she made a grim discovery of a “completely intact” skeleton in a second-floor bedroom.
A police source reportedly told The New York Post while the body was decomposed it was evident the corpse was still wearing jeans, socks and a shirt, lying on its back on a thin mattress on the floor.
“It’s like some reverse ‘Psycho’ scene,” a law enforcement officer told The Post.
But things might not be a creepy as they sound.
Wolfensohn is reportedly legally blind and a hoarder – one police source reportedly said it was like “a garbage truck had dumped its load” inside.
When police questioned the woman she allegedly spoke of her dead son as if he’d simply moved out a long time ago – seemingly unaware he was dead.
Wolfensohn has lived alone since her husband died in 1987 and her brother, Joseph Buchman told reporters he was not close with his sister.
Buchman only reconnected with his estranged sister after suspicions were raised about the ailing woman’s state when mail began to pile up outside and the phone went unanswered. It’s believed she’s now being cared for in a nursing home on Long Island.
The Post reports that public records show Wolfensohn had two sons, Michael and Louis. Michael died in 2003 at the age of 38 and Louis had not been seen by relatives in 20 years.
However, this is not the first case of an person living with someone dead was inside their home.
In 2014 the skeletal remains of Kenneth Brown found in armchair by neighbour after his reclusive son Timothy failed to report death to police. An inquest found Timothy, 59, lived with his dead father’s body for up to four months until a neighbour saw him watching television with the skeletal remains propped in a chair, dressed in pyjamas.
In that same year Argentinian man Claudio Alferi, 58, was found dead in his Buenos Aires home and next to him was the body of his mother, Margarita. The woman appeared to have died 10 years earlier but the body was not buried and an investigators said it appeared the corpse was an active part of Claudio’s routine.
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