This one sounds like the opening scene from a horror film and probably could be, and it just so happens to coincide with pre-Halloween Week.
Over in the East Bay, we are just getting word of a gruesome, no doubt pungeant scene that Union City police officers stumbled upon by accident in August. As the East Bay Times reports, it all began with a mistaken missing persons report regarding a 95-year-old woman with Alzheimer's disease.
A relative called the Union City Police Department to report that this 95-year-old woman was missing. Before police were able to determine her whereabouts — she had, in fact, been checked into a nursing home two years earlier and this relative was not informed of this — they went to her last known address, on the 300 block of Appian Way.
There, as the East Bay Times reports via the police report, officers encountered a home and yard in a serious state of neglect, with discarded furniture, newspapers, and various piles of trash outside, a "noticeable presence" of flies in the home and a terrible stench. The one inhabitant, a man in his 50s, was a relative of the 95-year-old woman, and appeared to be extremely unkempt and mentally ill. The man refused to allow police to enter the home, but they ultimately got the man — who reportedly had long fingernails and mold growing on one of his ears — on an involuntary psychiatric hold so that they could search the home.
In addition to more piles of trash, discarded food, and more detritus, police made the grisly discovery of a partially mummified body in one of the bathrooms. The person, whose identity remains unknown, appeared to have died while on the toilet and remained, frozen and decomposing, in that position.
This John Doe remains a mystery to police, and they continue to try to figure out his age and identity. The manner of death also remains unknown.
"We treat every suspicious death as a potential homicide from the start," says Union City Police Lt. Sergio Quintero, speaking to the East Bay Times. "But that’s not where this investigation is heading, as of right now."
The story is reminiscent of one in San Francisco a decade ago, in which a mentally ill woman lived with the decaying corpse of her mother in a bedroom for an unknown number of years. Carolyn Ragin was found living in a home on Fourth Avenue in the Richmond District in April 2015 with the mummified corpse of her mother, Anna Ragin. It was a hoarder situation, and the corpse had been there for at least several years. And the story made local headlines in part because it looked like a major house-flipper opportunity in a booming market — with the house likely to fetch $2.5 million or more after a renovation.
Indeed, property records indicate it was listed in June 2014 for $928,000 and sold several months later for $1.56 million. That buyer appears to have held onto the home and likely didn't make many improvements over several years, because it sold again for $1.82 million in 2021. Redfin now shows it as pending sale, after a full renovation and being listed for $4.295 million in September 2024.
Top image: Street in Union City where the mummified corpse was found, via Google Street View
