Walled-Up Bodies

[AmStramGram]

Weird story found in "Le Figaro", one of the main French newspapers :

A lady from the town of Livry Gargan left her flat for 6 months in order to visit some family and friends in Algeria. During her absence she rented her flat to a couple "who planned to make some works" within the precincts ( bizarre ...).

When she came back, she was surprised to find a wall erected in one of the corners of her kitchen, a strong smell of bleach in the flat, and an overabundance of flees.

She immediately alerted the police, who set themselves to dismount the wall. Behind, they found the decaying body of a man in foetal position, and lots of corpse eating insects.

Nothing is said of the tenant couple, who are probably responsible for this misfeat. What a strange idea they had to hide a body in an improvised wall ! Maybe they read too many folktales about inmured bodies !

Source :

https://www.lefigaro.fr/faits-diver...-retrouve-emmure-dans-un-appartement-20230710

 

[escargot]

The British serial killer John Christie concealed some of his victims' bodies behind improvised walls.

 

[hunck]

Weird story found in "Le Figaro", one of the main French newspapers :

A lady from the town of Livry Gargan left her flat for 6 months in order to visit some family and friends in Algeria. During her absence she rented her flat to a couple "who planned to make some works" within the precincts ( bizarre ...).

When she came back, she was surprised to find a wall erected in one of the corners of her kitchen, a strong smell of bleach in the flat, and an overabundance of flees.

She immediately alerted the police, who set themselves to dismount the wall. Behind, they found the decaying body of a man in foetal position, and lots of corpse eating insects.

Nothing is said of the tenant couple, who are probably responsible for this misfeat. What a strange idea they had to hide a body in an improvised wall ! Maybe they read too many folktales about inmured bodies !

Source :

https://www.lefigaro.fr/faits-diver...-retrouve-emmure-dans-un-appartement-20230710

Weird - I wouldn’t have thought tenants are allowed to build walls in rented properties. What’s wrong with driving to a remote spot & digging a hole? More chance of getting away with it..

 

[escargot]

There was also a British pub landlord who seems to have murdered his wife and walled up her body in an outbuilding.
She'd gone missing decades ago and it her remains were found after the landlord's death when the pub was being refurbished.

Can't find it online but it'll turn up.

Edit - found this old Walesonline news report that might be it.

The implication here is of suicide rather than murder and there's no mention of active walling-up.
However, the landlord/husband does seem to have known what really went on.

Landlady's death still a mystery

A pub landlady whose mysterious disappearance almost three decades ago sparked a nationwide police hunt may have been lying dead yards from her home all along, an inquest heard today.

The skeletal remains of Barbara Maddock were discovered last year in an outhouse attic of the Aubrey Arms pub, in the Swansea Valley, that she ran with her husband, Bill.


Dyfed Powys Police, in south Wales, launched a second major investigation 27 years after the first one in a bid to unravel the mystery of her disappearance.

Det Supt Euros Lewis told a Swansea Valley inquest at Ystradgynlais, an empty milk bottle and an empty pill bottle were found next to the curled-up remains of the mother of two.

She was discovered by workmen in August 2000 employed to renovate the dilapidated building by the current landlord, the couple's son, Hywel Griffith.

Here's more about it from the Independent, from soon after the body was found, with some background.
Seems locals believed the discovery of Barbara's body on the premises meant she was murdered by her husband and concealed in the attic, which is described as a 'first floor office'.

Police lay to rest the mystery of Mrs Maddock

Will Maddock, a two-bottles-of-whisky-a-day man, was a larger-than-life character, a pub landlord extraordinaire, a man around whom men and fun would congregate.

But a man, too, who may have maintained an extraordinary pretence, claiming for 17 years that his wife had left him, when all the time she was rotting above the Aubrey Arms' beer store.

It's stuck in my mind all these years because it seemed so improbable.

 

[RaM]

Not a human body but for what it's worth.

Many years ago there used to be a Zoo at Heysham Head, if you know where to look
some of the cadges are or were I haven't looked for some time, still there, they are set in a cliff wall.
When it was closed no one could account for the whereabouts of the Bear, it was never
found and disappeared over night, but I knew the lady that lived in the Zoo owners house.
She told me that in the cellar under the house against the wall were the grill is to let in
air and light is a strange low wall set against the outside wall, I think she thought that
was the resting place of the bear.

 

[Dick Turpin]

The British serial killer John Christie concealed some of his victims' bodies behind improvised walls.

Correct Scargs, he did. Without googling it, the next tenant (John Brown….?) found the bodies behind a false wall in the kitchen the day he moved into the property. Grizzly stuff eh..?.

I watched a documentary about the case some years ago, and not long before Christie moved out of the house, a young beat constable chased a shoplifter from a grocery shop straight into the house in Rillington place, (the rooms to the house being heavily sublet at the time) and the young constable mentioned to Christie the terrible smell emanating from the property.

Bloody foreign tenants was Christie’s excuse – yeah right.

 

[escargot]

Correct Scargs, he did. Without googling it, the next tenant (John Brown….?) found the bodies behind a false wall in the kitchen the day he moved into the property. Grizzly stuff eh..?.

I watched a documentary about the case some years ago, and not long before Christie moved out of the house, a young beat constable chased a shoplifter from a grocery shop straight into the house in Rillington place, (the rooms to the house being heavily sublet at the time) and the young constable mentioned to Christie the terrible smell emanating from the property.

Bloody foreign tenants was Christie’s excuse – yeah right.

Everything about Christie was grim and sleazy.

 

[RaM]

You would think the police man would recognize the smell,

 

[escargot]

You would think the police man would recognize the smell,

Yup, for sure. The fact that he'd readily believe a story about foreigners producing such a smell means he'd be suspicious about what they were up to; illegal animal-slaughtering and meat storage, perhaps?

Back in the day there was no such thing as cultural sensitivity. You'd think he'd be sniffing around for a collar to feel.

 

[Dick Turpin]

You would think the police man would recognize the smell,

You would have thought so Ram.

In the mid 90’s me and a mate was offered a couple of hundred quid each to clear out a branch of Dewhurst the butchers (remember them). I’ll say this – it took almost a week to get the stench of rotting flesh out from my nostrils. As for food…??? Forget it, I couldn’t keep anything down for days.

A good way to lose weight though I suppose.

 

[RaM]

Once smelt never forgotten.

 

[brownmane]

Once smelt never forgotten.

Any rotting animal smells. And the smell travels a good distance as well.