As children we were sometimes afraid of what might be in the closet, but it turns out that bodies in the closet are a real occurrence. The following five cases of bodies discovered in the closet happened at the beginning of the twentieth century and were as creepy then as they are today.
Murdered and Dismembered
The headline said it all, and, in truth, it doesn’t get much more gruesome than this. It was 1905 in New York City when a head was discovered wrapped in a blue and white shirt in front of a house. The police began their investigation immediately and soon an unnamed informant told them that there had been a murder on Third Avenue.
The police went to the home and conducted a search. Inside they found a suitcase containing the arms and legs of a man. Eventually, they found the victim’s torso stuck inside a closet.
A man who had been seen coming from the home was arrested. According to him, he and another man had spent the night lodging in the victim’s rented room. When he woke up, the other man was gone and the victim was in pieces. [1]
Bullet in the Brain
In Long Beach, California, 1922, I. G. Christensen went into a closet, locked it, and put a bullet through his brain. When the police investigate the incident, they discovered that the man was suffering from financial worries and poor health. The worst part of this, other than this gentleman deciding to take his life, was that his mother was with him in Long Beach. They were on a visiting vacation. [2]
Left Alone
A young mother was left alone inside her apartment in Philadelphia back in 1906. While her husband, a traveling salesman, was away, someone came into her apartment, beat her, and stabbed her repeatedly.
After the young mother had been brutally subdued, she was dragged, according to the blood trail, from the dining room and into the parlor where she was placed in the closet.
According to the report:
“The position of the woman’s body in the little closet in the hall seemed to indicate that life had not been extinct when she was thrust into its depths. Part of the weight of the body was on the feet, but the major portion of the trunk rested on a shelf, the head, with jugular vein severed with some sharp instrument, which, the detectives say, was a stiletto, and her long dark hair clotted with blood, lay forward on the left arm, as though she had so fallen when too weak to stand.”
There was no clue as to who the murderer was, although the police suspected it might have been another woman. [3]
Last Meal
Julius Dunst sat down with his wife for dinner in the summer of 1910 and announced: “This is the last meal we are going to have on earth. You are going to die and I am going to follow you.” With that, the husband leaped across the table and attempted to choke his wife to death.
The wife struggled desperately and soon escaped her husband’s grasp. She ran out onto the porch and screamed loudly for the neighbors to help her.
As the neighbors came to her aid, the husband went into a closet, took off his left shoe and sock, put the shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger with his toe. Death was instant. [4]
Beaten and Strangled
In the summer of 1916, John Schalapin knocked on the door of his apartment, hoping his wife would answer. Instead, the door burst open and a man threw acid onto his face, blinding him. John screamed in pain and attempted to grapple with the man, but, not being able to see, the intruder got away.
Alerted by his screams, neighbors came to his aid, and soon the police were at the apartment. John was taken to the hospital and the police began a quick search of the apartment for any clue.
As the police walked up and down the stairs, they passed a little room where, in the closet, the body of John’s wife lay. According to one report:
“A man’s yellowish silk sock knotted around her neck and a man’s handkerchief stuffed into her mouth had strangled her. Above her right temple were three deep wounds, blows struck with a force that had crushed her skull.”
Shortly after the body had been discovered, the landlord’s wife received a letter from her husband:
The neighbors also talked. Apparently the landlord was attracted to John’s young wife, but she refused to return his affections, and died for it. [5]
