Mummified Body Found
 

Mummified body found in front of TV
Tuesday, January 10, 2006; Posted: 1:15 p.m. EST (18:15 GMT)

CINCINNATI, Ohio (AP) -- The mummified body of a woman who didn't want to be buried was found in a chair in front of her television set 2 1/2 years after her death, authorities said.

Johannas Pope had told her live-in caregiver that she didn't want to be buried and planned on returning after she died, Hamilton County Coroner O'Dell Owens said Monday.

Pope died in August 2003 at age 61. Her body was found last week in the upstairs of her home on a quiet street. (Watch why the caregiver thought body parts grew back -- 1:37)

Some family members continued to live downstairs, authorities said. No one answered the doorbell at Pope's home Monday afternoon.

It could take weeks to determine Pope's cause of death because little organ tissue was available for testing, Owens said.

An air conditioner had been left running upstairs, and that allowed the body to slowly mummify, he said. The machine apparently stopped working about a month ago, and the body began to smell.

"Standing outside, one could smell death," Owens said.

Police went to the house last Wednesday after receiving a call from a relative who hadn't seen Pope in years. They found a staircase behind a door blocked by a basket and climbed to the second floor, where they found the body.

It was not clear if any crimes were committed, Owens said.

Authorities did not identify the caregiver, a woman in her 40s who apparently lived in the home with Pope, Pope's daughter and her 3-year-old granddaughter.

"The caregiver is not someone you'd think was from another planet or really seems off the wall -- (she's) a pretty normal kind of person," he said. "But I think out of loyalty, friendship and love of her friend, (she) decided to keep the body at home."

SOURCE

You don't want to know..

It's a smell you never, ever forget..

Plus the older the body the more terrible the smell becomes.

And, in my opinion, it's worse when it's cold...

Death or decay? There's a difference...

To me it's musty, with a faint sickly-sweet tinge. Not revolting by any means, just kind'a creepy.

Decay however is much worse.

Would you like some Grey Poupon?

Hmm, death really smells? Or do you mean the smell of a corpse?

That's an interesting article.

I feel like a child now. I felt kind of spooked out after reading that.

I first saw death when I was about 4 years old, it was sad, but not too shocking, and by some reason, I remember some bunnies related to that memory

i heard that death is a really bad smell.

I wanna be in forensics...