ISDP: The Non-Nosey Neighbor Edition

Welcome to this month’s collection of macabre and malodorous incidents from the Dark Side. The timid and easily offended should seek amusement elsewhere, perhaps here.  

We begin with the case of the stinky “horrorcore” rapper. The horrorcore genre, for those of you hopelessly out of date with current musical trends, features “artists rhyming about raping, killing and mutilating people.”

Richard “Sam” McCroskey, 20, from Castro Valley, California, is an aspiring horrorcore artiste known professionally as “Syko Sam.” He’s suspected of killing his 16-year-old girlfriend, her father and mother, and another girl in Farmville, Virginia. Afterwards, he allegedly stole the father’s car and drove it into a ditch at four in the morning. Police ticketed him for driving without a license and had the car towed. The tow truck driver gave McCroskey a ride as did cab driver Curtis Gibson later that morning. 

Both drivers said they noticed a foul odor on McCroskey. Police have said some of the bodies found in the home were badly decomposed.

“It wasn’t something I’ve never smelled before,” Gibson said.

Grammar aside, we think we know what he means. May he never have to smell it again.

In WTNK, I nominated for a Norman Bates Award the lady who drove from Oklahoma to Florida for five days with the body of her dead mother in the car. A recent news story suggests a strong contender for the 2009 nomination:

A Sebastian woman who pleaded guilty to a criminal charge related to collecting her dead mother’s federal benefits for six years was ordered Monday to serve one year and one day in prison.

Penelope Jordan, 61, was arrested in late March by Sebastian police after they found the decaying body of her mother, Timmie Jordan, in a barricaded bedroom of their Wimbrow Drive home. Jordan told officials she kept the corpse there since her mother’s death in early 2003.

Six years and no whiff of suspicion? I guess Ms. Jordan didn’t have very nosey neighbors.

On September 15, Paula Devlin of The Times-Picayune reported a classic ISDP incident:

A fisherman hunting for grasshoppers found the nude corpse of a woman under a blanket Monday evening in a wooded area of eastern New Orleans, police said.

The man smelled a foul odor, then spotted a hand under a blanket in the 15200 block of Chef Menteur Highway, police said.

Also last month, sheriffs in Yuba County, California made an arrest in a July murder that never made it onto the ISDP radar. The deceased’s body was found when “when neighbors noticed a foul odor coming from his apartment.”

In last month’s edition we told you about the folks in Bloomington, Indiana who thought they were smelling a nearby sewage treatment plant when, in fact, they were detecting the remains of 24-year-old Johnny Turnpaugh. On September 18, Nicholas C. Brooks pleaded not guilty to first degree murder in the case. According to reporter Edith Brady-Lunny, Brooks is charged with “stabbing Turnpaugh and penetrating his skull with an unknown object.” This makes the story’s headline somewhat counter-intuitive:

Normal man pleads not guilty in slaying of 24-year-old.

Finally, although we don’t usually cover foreign affairs at ISDP, this item from Penampang, Malaysia caught our attention. 

Followers of a cult here kept the body of their leader wrapped in plastic for 13 months after his death, while praying for him to be resurrected.

Police remained tight-lipped over the bizarre discovery but it is believed that the body was badly decomposed but neighbours had not complained of a foul smell.

Whoa! So what did draw their attention?

complaints on the chanting of prayers late into the night.