ISDP: Springtime in Middle America

Here at FirstNerve Manor the fly-specked calendar nailed above the bread box indicates that it is the thirteenth of the month and time for a new installment of our insanely popular recurring feature, I Smell Dead People.

A gruesome episode in Knoxville, Tennessee last month provided a clinic in how to write headlines. Knoxville’s WBIR-TV went minimalist: “Body found under deck identified.”

The Johnson City Press’s just the facts approach was more descriptive: “Dead 2 weeks: Foul smell leads Knoxville homeowner to man’s body under deck.”

But KSNW-TV in Wichita, Kansas went all in with a Pulitzer-worthy “Easter egg hunt horror.”

The hunt for the source of a foul odor ended with the discovery of a decomposing body under the deck of a family’s home in west Knoxville.

The body was found by a mother who was having an Easter egg hunt for her four-year-old child in the back yard, according to Knoxville police. Officials said the body had been there for about two weeks.

The woman told police she had smelled a foul odor outside her home on Forest View Road for several days. She tried to find the source of the smell a couple of times during the week to no avail.

When someone cut the woman’s grass earlier this week, she asked the person mowing to search for whatever was creating the foul odor in the yard. The person cutting the grass also did not notice the corpse beneath the deck.

Wednesday night at 7:19 p.m., the mother noticed the smell again during the Easter egg hunt and was finally able to locate the body.

The body has been identified as that of a 29-year-old local homeless man.

Road Trip!

Bunch of guys from Winona, Minnesota pull the RV into the parking lot at Shopko.

The first hint of death came when one of the guys opened a front compartment on one side, then closed the door, Wanek said. That sent off the whoosh of an odd odor. When the door on the other side near the front was opened, that’s when the body was spotted, he said.

They were a bachelor party heading for the Kentucky Derby. The victim has been identified as a 22-year-old who had been missing for four months.

And in Another Parking Lot . . .

In Wichita, Kansas:

It began when Bryce and Rebecca Baker said they noticed a bad smell in their apartment complex parking lot in Maize.

Rebecca Baker said she detected the odor a couple of weeks ago but thought it must be a dead animal, possibly in a sewer drain, at the Fieldstone Apartments, 5050 N. Maize Road. Bryce Baker said he mentioned the smell to property management staff and they said they would check into it.

Pity the poor maintenance staff. But did they follow up? Noooooo.

In the same parking lot, Bryce Baker, 19, also noticed a white car, parked in the same spot for about a month. Thinking back Monday, he remembered seeing – through the car’s tinted windows – a long-handle shovel leaning against the front passenger seat.

He didn’t peer into the back seat. If he had, he might have a seen a body.

That’s what Maize police found after Bryce Baker called 911 on Monday morning after noticing a really bad odor and flies swarming around the white car.

Always Trust Your Nose.

“You just don’t think this would happen,” Bryce Baker said.

Well, that’s not what an ISDP fan would think . . .

The deceased was a 54-year-old man who owned a sports bar in nearby McPherson.

The Wheels of Justice

Finally, a followup to a story we covered two years ago. Thirty-year-old John Ben Jones, Jr. of Tacoma, Washington has been sentenced to 17 years in prison.

Prosecutors say the case began when Jones’ mother noticed a foul smell coming from her sons’ [sic] bedroom. The smell came from the decomposing and partially dismembered body of Williams, who had been strangled the night before.