Last Updated on February 24, 2022
A 50-year-old man tells his family he wants to be left alone, then goes into his bedroom and closes the door behind him.
His family apparently took him at his word. And didn’t bother him. For years. Until it was too late.
Last week, his body was found in his bed where it may have been for four years without any of his four brothers and sisters, with whom he lived, knowing that he had died.
It wasn’t until one of his siblings disobeyed his “last wishes” to inform him of renovation work being carried out on their home that his death was discovered.
The family’s doctor called police but a Dutch paper reports that foul play is not suspected.
How is it, exactly, that someone could die in a home — even behind a closed door — and no one living in the home with him would notice for four years?
Wouldn’t it have occurred to someone that he might want to get a bite to eat out of the kitchen? Or even get up to go to the bathroom? Even if he had a bathroom in his room, wouldn’t it occur to someone after four years that they’d never heard a toilet flush or a shower being taken?
And then there’s the smell: can you imagine living in a home where a dead body was decomposing in a bedroom and not noticing the smell?
I remember when serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was captured that neighbors said they’d been complaining about the smell of rotting meat for some time.
I just can’t believe that it took them four years to notice he was deceased. Does that make sense to anyone else?
It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. And let the word right forth as of right now – if anyone thinks this is how people "do it in Europe," it most assuredly is not. I do remember stories about an old woman dying alone in her apartment and not being discovered for a few months, but the circumstances in these cases were very different. I am having a hard time wrapping my head around this one. Maybe this was a townhouse of some kind? This makes no sense.