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Found & Recovered Bodies (In General; Misc.)

WhistlingJack

Gone But Not Forgotten
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The Times, June 26, 2006

Caver’s remains finally recovered

The remains of an amateur explorer are recovered 41 years after he died while exploring a cave.


James Mitchell suffered exposure on a cold February day in 1965 while hanging from a harness in a cavern in Dolgeville, New York State.

Gallons of cold water poured over him every minute after he got stuck while descending a vertical shaft. The death of Mitchell, 23, a chemist from Massachusetts, prompted greater concerns about safety and the formation of rescue teams.

At the weekend his brother Bill emerged from the site — Schroeder’s Pants Cave — with a team who spent four hours recovering his bones and helmet. The occasion was filmed for a documentary. (AP)

Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd.

Scradje
 
How very gruesome. :(

Several of my ex brothers-in-law are cavers and they take part in rescues sometimes. I don't know if they personally have had to recover bodies, but they have told me awful stories of cavers' limbs having to be broken in order to get them out, dead or alive.

shudders
 
This puts me in mind of an incident I may have read about in Bizarre magazine a few years ago. It was an article about deep diving, where the divers go as deep as they can and frequently suffer hallucinations, euphoria, feelings of invincibility leading to the removal of scuba gear= death, that sort of thing.(Just googled and this is called 'nitrogen narcosis'). On one of these dives, a guy had gone missing and nothing was seen or found of him for some time- that is, until a later dive located a small cave which contained an air pocket, deep under the sea. The likely origin of the air pocket was explained in the article, but typially I can't remember. It seems that this diver had surfaced in the tiny cave, with nothing but air and a small ledge for him to scramble on to- and he didn't have nearly enough oxygen in his tanks to make the surface. His choice- wait in the cave for unlikely rescue and probable death from lack of oxygen/starvation/cold, or swim for it knowing he would not make it. He waited in the cave, where his body was eventually found in the silence amid letters to his loved ones scratched onto the cave walls.
This story really gave me the willies. If I remember correctly, the article provided names and locations too. I must look online or dig through back issues.
 
I believe it's Mount Everest that has the frozen remains of climbers in full view of the main path taken by climbers today. Apprently if someone dies they don't remove the bodies due to the remote and difficult terrain, and being such a cold place, they just remain frozen.
I saw a show on tv following climbers and it was quite bizarre to see these frozen remains partially snow-buried in full modern climbing gear within feet of the lines they(the living climbers) were using to ascend.
 
In 1936, the Austrian-German four man rope of Edi Rainer, Willy Angerer, Andreas Hinterstoisser (the man whose brilliant traverse opened the way to the First Icefield) and Toni Kurz died trying to become the first party up the north face of the Eiger.

Kurz's body hung from ropes for months in plain view of tourists manning the telescopes on the hotel patio at Kleine Scheidegg at the base of the mountain.
 
While working as a commercial fisherman I found a total of 3 bodies over a period of around 5 years or so. I lived near 2 of the bridges that were most traveled for crossing into town from the outskirts. They were also used the most for suicide by drowning.
Some victims were accidents and some were not. All had begun to bloat from internal gases
All of them were floating partially submerged but with enough sticking out of the water to easily be seen for a good distance if you were paying attention to your surroundings.
I always thought it was a waste having the rescue squad dredge the river bottom for bodies, when a body will always surface after 3 days if not snagged quite hard on an object at the bottom.
In fact it takes about 3 times the weight of the body to keep it under after 3 days, due to the buildup of gases caused by the begining of decomposition from within.
If we heard of a dissapearance , we would wait 3 days , the cruise the waters and usually find the corpse just a few hundred yards to a few miles, from the point of "last seen" depending on whether the current had run fast or slow during that time period. We would know because we kept track of when the flood gates of the dam were opened , this is necessary to fishermen who used nets so as not to have them carried away by the current.
The boat owner had been in the local newspaper for finding so many bodies.
 
Dead climber found after 17 years

The body of a climber has been found 17 years after he died in a mountaineering accident in the French Alps.
Mike Seavers was part of an ill-fated climbing party which attempted to scale the 15,000ft (4,572m) Mont Blanc when they were caught in a severe storm.

The bodies of the 31-year-old from Bristol and a German member of the party were found in a melting glacier.

Nick Cotton, from the British Mountaineering Council, said they had obviously been preserved by the ice [...]


BBC
 
Dead climber found after 17 years

The body of a climber has been found 17 years after he died in a mountaineering accident in the French Alps.


Mike Seavers was part of an ill-fated climbing party which attempted to scale the 15,000ft (4,572m) Mont Blanc when they were caught in a severe storm.

The bodies of the 31-year-old from Bristol and a German member of the party were found in a melting glacier.

Mr Seavers' father Ian, from Stansted in Essex, said he was arranging to have his son's remains returned home.

"It's something we've been living with for the past 17 years," he said.

"It's been a little trying on the emotions but this has come as a big relief."

Mike Seavers lived in Bristol after studying geology at Bristol University.

He worked for the oil industry, but had been hoping to set up his own outdoor pursuits business.

Nick Cotton, from the British Mountaineering Council, said the bodies of Mr Seavers and his friend had obviously been preserved by the ice.

"They may have gone inside a crevasse to take cover and got covered, possibly by an avalanche or snowfall.

"Glaciers are flowing things. They move at an imperceptible speed and anything travels with it encased in ice.

"When they get to a point where the glacier melts, things appear."

It is not the first time a climber has been found several years after going missing.

In 1999, an expedition to Mount Everest found the body of the famous British climber, George Mallory, who disappeared seventy-five years earlier, a short distance from the summit.

Story from BBC NEWS:

Published: 2006/08/19 14:25:42 GMT

© BBC MMVI
 
More remains found at Ground Zero

More human remains have been found at the former site of the World Trade Center in New York in a new search for victims of the 9/11 attacks.


The search was prompted by the discovery on Friday of about 80 human bones and fragments in rubble from an abandoned manhole near the site.

It sparked angry calls from victims' relatives for a more thorough search.

Families of more than 1,100 of those who died have never received any remains of their loved ones.

After construction workers made the first unexpected discovery on Friday, city officials then ordered new checks of underground areas close to Ground Zero that could have been missed.

On Saturday, workers removed more debris from manholes. Forensic officials sifted it and found another 15 human fragments, Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler said.

More manholes will be searched in coming days, officials said.

The original search of the site ended in 2002, after about 20,000 human fragments had been unearthed.

The discovery comes just weeks after the fifth anniversary of the 11 September 2001 attacks, in which more than 2,700 people died.

Story from BBC NEWS:

Published: 2006/10/22 05:37:25 GMT

© BBC MMVI
 
I have no understanding why potholers need must go though such narrow holes...
 
Kondoru said:
I have no understanding why potholers need must go though such narrow holes...

Because they wouldn't be potholers if they didn't. Potholers have to go into narrow holes by definition.
 
Japan WWII Sailors Stay In Wreck

Japan WWII sailors stay in wreck

The bodies of two Japanese sailors who attacked Sydney harbour during World War II are to be left in their wrecked submarine, Australian officials say.


Katsuhisa Ban and Mamoru Ashibe crewed one of three mini-submarines that infiltrated the harbour in May 1942.

They torpedoed a ship, killing 21 sailors, before vanishing amid heavy fire. Divers found the wreck last year.

Australian officials will present a jar of sand from the site of the wreck to the families of the two men.

The government has also declared the location of the mini-submarine, 50km (31 miles) off the coast, a historic site.

The attack was part of an operation aimed at disrupting US and Australian shipping at the height of the war.

Three mini-submarines evaded protective nets stretched across the entrance to Sydney harbour and tried to sink the American battle cruiser USS Chicago.

They failed to do this, but one of their torpedoes hit the Australian naval vessel HMAS Kuttabul. Nineteen Australian sailors and two Britons were killed.

Two of the submarines were damaged during the attack, and then scuttled by their crews.

But the third remained unaccounted for until amateur divers found it on the ocean floor in November last year.

On Monday, Australian navy divers mapped and surveyed the wreck, which is largely intact and sitting upright on the ocean floor.

But they said an escape ladder was still stowed on the coning tower, meaning that the bodies of the crew were likely to be inside.

Salvaging the vessel has been ruled out on grounds of cost and difficulty, but Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull said that the government would look after the wreck.

"We are committed to ensuring this internationally significant wreck is protected and treated with honour and respect," he said.

Sonar alarms and underwater cameras have been installed to keep curious divers away.

Speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in December 2006, Mr Ashibe's brother Itsuo said that he realised salvaging the submarine was impossible.

"I would like to take home an article left by my brother or even a broken piece of the top of the sub, then it would mean my brother came home," he said.

Story from BBC NEWS:

Published: 2007/05/22 20:07:28 GMT

© BBC MMVII
 
Titanic's dead

How about this: after the Titanic disaster, several hundred bodies were plucked from the sea, most being buried at Fairview cemetery in Canada. One of these bodies was for "an unknown child", unidentified for decades.

A few years back, a TV company decided to see if the remains of three bodies could be identified: two had no DNA that could be extracted, but the third, that of the child, had DNA and a match was made. The child turned out to be Eino Panula from Sweden....

.....except that it wasn't. A more thorough analysis of the DNA makes it seem likely that the child was Sidney Goodwin.

What a terrible situation.
 
....and now I've just found out that the relatives of the Panula family may sue over the misidentification and the trauma they have been put through.
 
WWI bodies are found on glacier

The bodies of three Austrian soldiers killed in World War I have been found on an Italian glacier, almost perfectly preserved, an Italian museum says.
The corpses were found at about 3,400m (11,500ft) on the mountain of San Matteo in the Trentino region.

The area was the scene of high-altitude fighting between Austrian and Italian forces towards the end of the war.

Historians believe the men may have died on 3 September 1918, during what was called "the great battle".

The preserved bodies were spotted and retrieved by Maurizio Vincenzi.

Not only is he an amateur historian, but he is also a member of the local mountain rescue team, and the director of the military history museum at the small town of Peio.

The museum announced the discovery on Sunday, after Mr Vincenzi and his colleagues recovered the bodies on Friday.

Mr Vincenzi, 46, said: "Using binoculars, I saw what looked like a stain on the Forni glacier and went to look."

"When I got close, I discovered they were the bodies of soldiers frozen in the glacier. Nothing like this has ever happened in my lifetime. Bodies haven't been found in the ice around here for decades," he said.

He said the bodies were found upside down, encased in ice.

Their uniforms included leather belts, a gas mask and a cap with a star on it - all in good condition.

It is thought the men may have died in a grenade attack.

The battle, 86 years ago, was won by the Austrians, but they lost 11 men in the process.

"This is an important discovery from a historical point of view, and exciting for the communities on both sides of the border," said Mr Vicenzi.

A funeral for the men is planned for Tuesday afternoon, after which they will be laid to rest in the local military cemetery.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3592268.stm

maximus otter
 
50+ year old Mummified Baby Found

(This story orginally appeared in January of this year.)

http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?secti ... id=4962418

DELRAY BEACH, Florida (CNN) -- The partially mummified body of a baby,
wrapped in 1950s newspapers, was found Monday by a woman going through
her deceased parents' belongings in a southeast Florida storage
facility, according to police.

"It was a baby boy, partially mummified," said Delray Beach police
spokesman Jeff Messer. "The woman was pretty upset when she found it.
You could make out the features pretty clearly." The child had hair, he
said.

The body was in a small suitcase, which was placed inside a larger
suitcase, said Messer, who viewed the remains.

"It was spooky," Messer said.

The baby was wrapped in a newspaper called The Daily Times, dated
January 9, 1957, police said. Authorities are not sure where it was
published, but were checking the New York and New Jersey area because
the couple lived there before retiring in Florida.

The body was "very well preserved. In my experience, I have not seen
remains in that condition after such a long time," said Police Lt. Mark
Woods.

The Palm Beach medical examiner's office was bringing in a forensic
anthropologist to determine the baby's age and cause of death. The
medical examiner previously declined comment.

The storage bay had been rented since 1996, Messer said. The woman's
father died in 2002 or 2003, and his wife died last year, he said. The
couple lived in Delray Beach at one point. Woods said their belongings
were stored in the warehouse after they moved to Florida in the middle
to late 1980s.

The daughter was notified by the warehouse owner that rent on the
storage bay was overdue and the contents would be sold at auction if
the account was not brought up to date, police said. She flew from New
Jersey to examine the contents of the storage bay and made the gruesome
discovery.

Police said the woman did not disturb the remains or remove the
newspapers they were wrapped in.

The daughter, who told police she did not know of any stillbirths or
abortions in the family, gave them permission to search the storage
area without a warrant, Messer said. It was described as being about
the size of a one-car garage and was filled with furniture and
housewares.

Police are treating the warehouse as a crime scene.
 
Soldiers' Remains Found On Remote Alaska Island

Soldiers' remains found on remote Alaska island

Wed Jul 18, 2007 5:43PM BST

By Yereth Rosen


ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - Japanese and U.S. officials have found four mass graves that they believe hold the remains of 500 World War II soldiers, nearly 65 years after a bloody battle on the remote Alaskan island of Attu.

A small team of specialists also found two boots containing bone fragments, remains that were exposed by erosion, said Bruce Woods, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees the island.

The four-day search, which concluded over the weekend, was the third for soldiers who died on treeless, mountainous Attu -- on the western edge of the Aleutian Islands and the site of the only World War II battle in continental North America.

Previous searches in 1953 and 1978 led to the removal and reburial of about 300 sets of remains, but the bodies of about 2,000 more war dead remain on Attu, according to Woods.

Attu, about 1,700 miles (2,736 km) southwest of Anchorage, was occupied by the Japanese in 1942. Residents of the tiny Aleut village were taken prisoner and sent to Japan, never to return home.

In 1943, U.S. forces took control of the island after a two-week battle that claimed about 540 American and 2,400 Japanese lives. Many of the Japanese committed suicide instead of surrendering, with only 28 Japanese soldiers surviving.

Last week's discovery of the mass graves confirmed some of the burial records from 1953, said a U.S. Defence Department officer who was on the expedition.

"It was not easy to find. Within the burial site, quite a bit of digging was done," said Major Christopher Johnson of the department's Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office, noting that six decades worth of vegetation had concealed the sites.

The remains were reburied in a brief ceremony, according to officials.

The ultimate fate of the remains on Attu will be decided by the Japanese government. The bodies could stay on the island or be excavated for reburial elsewhere, said Woods.

© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved.
 
Coroner May Provide Answers About Mummified Baby

Police have a grisly mystery on their hands after the remains of a mummified baby were found by a man doing renovations on a Toronto home.

The long-dead child was discovered wrapped in newsprint behind two walls in the Queen and Broadview-area home. Contractor Bob Kinghorn made the shocking discovery Tuesday as he was installing a light switch in the attic.

"It was between the third floor and the second floor ceiling in between the joists, the rafters, so it was stuck in there all wrapped up," he described. "It was mummified."

The newspaper the baby was wrapped in was dated 1925, but authorities say that doesn't mean that's when the child died. A post-mortem exam will be conducted Wednesday in order to come up with some answers on the circumstances of the death.

http://www.citynews.ca/news/news_13159.aspx
 
I think this belongs here. The bodies certainly wren't treated appropriately.

Body parts found at Moscow estate

Josef Stalin presided over a period of purges and mass killings
Body parts belonging to an estimated 34 people have been unearthed along with a rusty pistol at a 19th-Century Moscow mansion undergoing renovation.
Workers found the remains at a city centre site once owned by a tsarist-era noble family, the Sheremetyevs.

Forensic experts are trying to identify the bodies, some of which appear to date to the 1930s, an official said.

Thousands of perceived opponents and rivals of the Soviet leadership were killed by secret police in that period.

The killings reached their climax in 1937 and 1938, when historians say some 1.7 million people were arrested by the security services, at least 818,000 of whom were then shot.

The era, under the leadership of the dictator Josef Stalin, came to be known as the Great Terror.

Some of the remains, discovered in the basement of one of the buildings on the Moscow estate, had gunshot wounds to the back of the head, police spokesman Yevgeny Gildeyev told the Associated Press news agency.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7027588.stm
 
stories like this scare the crap out of me... i think because i can almost imagine doing something like that and then having the horror of having to realise one day that i'd been living with a stiff :shock:

Man lived with corpse for years

The body of a man believed to have been dead for more than five years has been found in a Bristol flat where a tenant continued to live.


The corpse was discovered by council workers on a sofa in the lounge after neighbours reported a foul smell.

The deceased man, believed to be in his 70s, was the tenant's former lodger at the flat in Bedminster.

It is thought the tenant failed to report the death because he suffers from mental health problems.

An inquest is due to open later.

'Shocked and concerned'

The tenant, also in his 70s, was initially arrested in connection with the discovery, but was later bailed. Police are no longer treating the death as suspicious.

Bristol City Council has launched an internal inquiry to establish how the corpse went unnoticed for so long.

A spokesman said: "We were alerted to the body after we received reports of a smell.

"We are shocked and concerned by this discovery and are carrying out an urgent internal review of the circumstances of the tenant.

"A police investigation is ongoing, and it would be inappropriate to comment further while this is taking place."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/7234810.stm
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
having the horror of having to realise one day that i'd been living with a stiff :shock:

I share your pain, I lived with a stiff for several years (then I divorced her).
 
Bedminster's predominantly Toltec, though.

Actually, this happens more than you'd think, though it's rarely five years before discovery. A few months, however, isn't all that unusual, especially with very elderly couples, who can find it very hard to let go. It sounds funny, I know, but it's deeply saddening to actually witness :(.
 
Oakland Park man finds skeleton in newly trimmed tree

South Florida Sun-Sentinel:

How no one smelled the horror that authorities say may have been up in Glenn Parker's overgrown tree for a year is a mystery, but the partially mummified body made itself known last week.

Tree trimmers cutting branches so BellSouth crews could service phone lines cleared enough foliage to let Parker spot a skeleton in the tree Friday, he said.

"I hope I don't find another one," said Parker, 45, on Monday.

Luckily, he said, there are no more large trees in his backyard.

Investigators removed a skeleton that had apparently been hanging in the tree since last year.

The Broward Sheriff's Office said the remains are likely those of someone who committed suicide, and foul play is not suspected.

The case remains under investigation.

Parker said investigators are checking to see if the remains could be those of his former roommate, who disappeared about a year ago.

But how nobody could have smelled the rotting corpse in Florida's broiling heat is puzzling.

"I never smelled anything," insisted Parker, who has lived in the house in the 1200 block of Northwest 43rd Street for 14 years.

His neighbors, whose backyard pool is just yards from where the body was found, said they never smelled anything, either.

The skull, Parker said, was about 5 feet off the ground, suspended in some leafy branches.

When Parker took a closer look, he said he spotted the skeleton hanging above it. That's when he called 911.

The tree has since been cut down.

Parker wonders how the tree trimmers didn't notice the skeleton.

The Sheriff's Office says it appears no one noticed it because it was camouflaged by the tree.

"It's weird," Parker said.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/ ... 3519.story

maximus otter
 
From The Times

November 15, 2008

En garde! Historian claims to have found d’Artagnan

Adam Sage in Paris

A five-year quest to locate the tomb of d’Artagnan – the inspiration for Alexandre Dumas’s novel The Three Musketeers – has led to a small Dutch church where new research suggests the swashbuckling hero is buried.

Charles de Batz de Castelmore d’Artagnan died during the Siege of Maastricht on June 25, 1673, and, according to a leading French historian, was laid to rest only few kilometres away at Saint Peter and Paul Church in Wolder. “The trail is very precise,” said Odile Bordaz, the author of several works on the musketeer.

Ms Bordaz discounted theories that d’Artagnan’s body was brought back to France, and is pressing the Dutch authorities and the Catholic Church to approve an archaeological dig of the site. “I would rate the chance of success at 50/50,” she said. “But it would be wonderful to find him. It’s like a police inquiry.”

Dumas wrote The Three Musketeers in 1844 after reading about d’Artagnan’s exploits in Les Mémoires de Monsieur d’Artagnan, which was published almost 150 years earlier.

Although he brought the action forward by 15 years and invented much of the storyline, the main characters are rooted in history. D’Artagnan was born in southwestern France between 1611 and 1615 and became a member of the King’s musketeers by the age of 20. Athos, Porthos and Aramis were among his comrades. He engaged in cloak-and-dagger operations for Louis XIII and then for Louis XIV, the Sun King, who appointed him to lead the musketeers in 1658.

Ms Bordaz said that his reputation as a lady-killer was justified: “The musketeers and their officers led joyous lives and multiple conquests not only on the battlefield but also in the secret of the alcoves.”

D’Artagnan was killed during a charge led by the Duke of Monmouth, who was at the head of an English contingent allied to France. For decades, historians assumed that his body had been repatriated but Ms Bordaz said she could find no trace of his tomb in France. She argued that because the hot, humid weather in June 1673 would have caused corpses to putrify rapidly, embalming would have been too costly and time-consuming.

During the siege the bodies of French officers were buried in the nearest Catholic church and recently discovered documents revealed that d’Artagnan’s camp was close to Wolder. This almost certainly meant that he was buried in Saint Peter and Paul Church, Ms Bordaz said.

Father Peter van der Aart, the parish’s priest, told The Times that there was a good possibility d’Artagnan was buried in or near the church, but said that an excavation would only be authorised if historians could be sure of the exact location of the tomb. “I don’t think we could dig up everything to look for him.”

© Times Newspapers Ltd
 
Re: Titanic's dead

DrPLee said:
... A few years back, a TV company decided to see if the remains of three bodies could be identified: two had no DNA that could be extracted, but the third, that of the child, had DNA and a match was made. The child turned out to be Eino Panula from Sweden....

.....except that it wasn't. A more thorough analysis of the DNA makes it seem likely that the child was Sidney Goodwin. ...

Update ... It's now being claimed that the Goodwin attribution is confirmed ...

http://www.livescience.com/13859-titani ... odwin.html
 
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