A Double Helping of ISDP

As we opened a new bag of Doritos and settled in to compile this month’s edition of I Smell Dead People, we noted to our dismay that we totally spaced out on the September round-up. Personally, we blame this mix-up on lower-level employees in the Cincinnati field office, if you know what we mean. But to make good we hereby offer our loyal fans a two-month double-helping of the most depressing and grotesque olfactory events imaginable.

The scene: a house on Squankum Road, in Lakewood, New Jersey.

Police were called by a property manager after a nearby business complained about an odor coming from the residence on Thursday. Police found a dead male inside a bedroom.

Wait. Just “an odor”? Not “a foul odor”? What gives?

The Asbury Park Press has a fuller account, published under the odd headline “Lakewood body identified as Brick man.” [Like Wicker Man?—Ed.] The deceased was a 45-year-old male from nearby Brick Township, across the Garden State Parkway from Lakewood. Both municipalities on are the Metedeconk River. Got it? Good.

In Houston, Texas, neighbors reported a “foul odor” and Harris County deputies made the find: two bodies and a “bloody scene” were discovered inside a garage.

In Brownsville, Texas, “Foul odor leads to discovery of dead woman, child.” Staff writer Christina R. Garza of the Brownsville Herald sets the scene:

Police cars and crime-scene tape marked off an area of Frankfurt Street in Brownsville Friday evening where the bodies of a woman and child were discovered. A foul odor hung in the night breeze as shocked neighbors surrounded the area. One woman said she’d smelled the odor since a day before but had believed it was remnants from the Thursday’s garbage collection in that neighborhood. The bodies were found inside a modest red brick home with a white picket fence. It is unknown how long they had been inside the house.

A man has been detained as a suspect in the case; he is said to be the estranged husband of the dead woman and father of the dead child. A coroner’s report found that the woman was killed by three gunshot wounds to the head.

A couple walking their dog in Dunbar, West Virginia noticed a foul odor coming from a two-story building. They called police who found a badly decomposed body inside. The body appears to have been there for several weeks.

The remains of a woman were found beneath a trailer home in Apache Junction, Arizona, after neighbors complained to police that a foul smell had been coming from it for several days. The body may be that of the mobile home’s resident, a woman who had been missing for several days. A 45-year-old man has been arrested in case. According to ABC-TV Channel 15, he has “a criminal background including several drug charges along with assault and domestic violence charges from earlier this year.”

A dismembered body wrapped in plastic was found in a garage in Hegewisch, Illinois, south of Chicago.

Investigators arrived at the scene Sunday after neighbors smelled a foul odor coming from the garage and alley.

The body may be that of a man whose ex-wife died a week earlier, and whose mother-in-law has been missing since. [So complicated.—Ed.] [That’s Chicago for you.]

If at first you don’t succeed, sniff, sniff, sniff again.

Sixty-six year old Richard Whipple was found dead of multiple stab wounds in his apartment in the Browne’s Addition section of Spokane, Washington. His remains were discovered after a foul odor was noted coming from his apartment—but it took a while.

managers entered Whipple’s apartment and saw an abundance of trash “strewn about the apartment.” They believed that was the source of the odor, so a janitor removed several bags of garbage and took them to the dumpster. But, the odor did not dissipate, so management went back into the apartment. That’s when they found Whipple dead in a recliner under several laundry items and a pillow.

Another Norman Bates Award™ Nominee

Ila Solomon of Lafayette, Indiana is alleged to have lived for about ten months in a house with the body of her dead husband, while collecting his Social Security and VA payments. She has been charged with “welfare fraud, theft, failure to report a dead body, unlawful disposition of a dead human body and failure to file a certificate of death.” A man who did some work on the house told police about a foul odor he smelled there, but his report triggered no action.

Norman Bates Award nominee, Overseas Division

Meerut: A 57-year-old man died allegedly due to starvation and his body was found only after one month from his home here.

Harendra Badhai, a former government doctor, was staying with his younger brother Harish Badhai (55) at their Shastri Nagar residence, police said, adding, the brothers were suffering from mental ailments.

The neighbours informed the police about a foul smell emanating from the house, following which police found Harendra’s rotten body on Saturday, they said.

The younger brother who was also present in the house said that Harendra is sleeping and asked the police not to take the body, police said, adding, he (Harish) was holed up inside his residence with the body for nearly one month.

The younger brother was an Air Force officer and the elder one was a doctor at CHC, Sardhana, both of whom left their jobs after mental problems, police added.

Chef kills and cooks girlfriend, kills self

We don’t normally track ISDP events outside the U.S., but this one warrants special mention:

An Australian chef has killed his girlfriend, dismembered her and boiled parts of her body before taking his own life, police say.

Marcus Volke, 28, was fleeing officers who had come to his Brisbane apartment after reports of a foul smell when he slashed his own throat in a bin.

Officers discovered body parts of Volke’s girlfriend in a pot on the stove, while other parts of the Indonesian woman’s mutilated body were found in garbage bins outside the apartment, according to local media.

The Mirror gets the headline prize for “‘He was boiling her feet when I walked in’: Electrician describes moment he saw killer cooking his wife.” The Mirror’s account is the only one to note that Volke’s wife was transgender. This reminds us, in a sort of reversed image way, of the case of Frederick Hengel, of Oceanside, California. The 69-year-old was known in the neighborhood for wearing women’s cloths. He was convicted of murdering and dismembering his 74-year-old wife, and boiling her remains on the stove.