New Homeowner Finds Former Owner Sitting On Couch. Mummified.

Coroners estimate the woman’s remains had been there since 2001, when she stopped making payments on the residence in the coastal town of Roses in Spain’s northeast Catalonia region.

The body mummified instead of rotting partly because of the salty seaside air in Roses, a Catalan regional police official said, speaking on customary condition of anonymity.

The woman, in her mid-50s, was estranged from her children in Madrid, and no one had reported her missing. She was not identified by officials.

Police said her death also went undetected because her ground-level apartment is in an area of vacation homes with a high turnover of travelers.

Roses Mayor Carles Paramo told the newspaper El Mundo it was normal that no one missed the woman because in housing developments like this one “people are not minding other people’s business.”

But authorities were surprised that bank officials who sold the residence after the foreclosure never bothered to examine it, the police official said.

Buyer Jordi Giro acquired the home last week. He visited it Saturday because a fire in the same building had forced the evacuation of some residents and he wanted to check for damage.

JOKESTARTERS:

• This story brings new meaning to the phrase “Mummy I’m home” doesn’t it?
• The dead body had been sitting in the couch for six years, yet the same commercial was playing on the TV – “I’ve mummified and I can’t get up!”
• Apparently nobody noticed that there was a decomposing body in this house, since most Spaniards don’t shower that often.

SOURCE:

• Journal-Times