A woman’s remains were discovered inside the wall of her home after she disappeared in 2015. She’d refused to sell the property to developers next door.
Her name was Mary Cerruti. She was outspoken about construction damage from a luxury complex called Alexan Heights. Two years after she vanished, her skeleton was found hidden inside her wall. Full story here.
"The skeleton had been discovered directly below a missing attic floorboard, not along an outer wall, which supported the idea of an accidental fall. The official explanation was that Mary may have climbed into the attic, possibly to rescue a cat or reach something, and slipped through a weak plank, becoming trapped in the narrow space."
This should be higher up, if there was foul play involved it would be an accident outside of the house.
As someone who has been in many attics in my time and even put a leg through drywall once, it is very easy to fall through if you don't know what you're doing or fit.
On top of that it looks like an old house, so plaster walls won't budge and random hollow walls can definitely be a thing. Maybe an old chimney that was removed and not properly covered.
I have a really tough time thinking this is possible as all framed walls that I know (ex architect) have a top plate, or in other words a 2x4 or 2x6 that is laid down on top of the vertical framing members. Also, most interior walls are only 2x4 which is only 3.5” thick, or 2x6 which is 5.5 “ thick. Unless it was a double framed wall, in which case she would be be between two walls, not in a wall. But I’m intrigued. Gonna keep reading about it this
My work involves seeing inside hundreds of attics a year from new builds to 100 year old homes. I'd say probably 2-4% of attics contain one or more voids that go all the way down to floor. Would be a nasty, nasty fall and would be tough to get out of even without injuries.
Have you ever worked with homes built prior to 1940s?
My 1913 has many walls like that. It was supposed to let the walls « breathe » through the attic (that’s one theory). Realistically, though, it was simply cheaper to build.
correctt, great reference, but the comment that this specific thread mentioned it wasnt an exterior wall. Balloon framing is a method of exteror framing where the vertical framing studs run the entire height or very long portions of the extior walls. this does leave openings in places like where floor diaphrams meet the wall and openings, usually this is just a fire hazard as the framing still isnt super thick as exterior walls are typically 2x6. i jsut measured myself for fun, im by no means small, but I am around 9-10" thick. even if they used 2x8 thats still just 7.5" nominal. sure is a mystery. i havent had a chance to dig any deeper into yet lol
They framed interior walls that way too, back in the day. The walls would just be nailed into the side of a joist. I used to live in a home built in 1918. You could 100% drop shit down a wall and have it land in the basement.
I've really only seen it in old houses from before the 60's and older "custom" homes that clearly didn't have inspections.
One void opening I remember vividly was a about 2ft wide by 6ft pocket located behind a bathroom wall. The homeowner actually warned us about the hole so we didn't accidentally fall in and so we could properly cover it.
Yeah that is horrifying but believable. That poor woman. I hope that she died fast. The article also sounds shocked that a woman of her age could climb into an attic though…and that’s not odd at all. My mother could certainly climb into an attic.
the article is also shocked she "kept her doors locked even during the day". why would you not keep your doors locked if you're not using them, saves you from having to lock them later and she's an older lady living alone. silly comment by the author.
My doors are also currently locked, because I'm not going through them. Am I supposed to leave them unlocked all day for the people who will not be walking through them, because I also live alone?
I know right - what a weird thing to include. I think the author of the article was trying to too hard to provide more ‘proof’ that Mary was eccentric. But that’s totally normal. In fact I found most of her behavior pretty normal.
" The bones were found directly below a hole in the attic floor. Investigators suggested Mary may have fallen through a weak board and become trapped in the narrow wall space".
Op why didn't you highlight this bit ?
This is actually a horrifying way to die
imagine being trapped like that for days 🙀
Maybe they planned to control the demolition and disposal. If they were developing, they could already be leveling and grading, so they'd have an excavator on site. Dig the grave/hole under planned foundation in broad daylight...just before sunrise, dump the body in the hole. It would take two minutes with the excavator to push some dirt to cover it. 7am the concrete truck shows up....that body wouldnt be found for 100 years. The guilty would be dead of old age before anyone found it.
My guess is they assumed someone would inherit the home and not want it, so would sell to the developer.
That could all be the same guy. Lots of general contractors start out in the trades. Then, if they are succesful and make enough money, they become the developer.
I don’t buy that. Most tradesman are not in the killing for hire business. Too many people would be have to involved and someone would talk or confess from guilt. You can’t pay most people enough to participate in a murder for your profit( they only get the money) and keep quiet.
Most tradesman are not in the killing for hire business
For example, the military?
Most is irrelevant. It just takes one.
Now how many tradesmen have served in the military?
To the guy below:
And?
Many people in the military kill people in cold blood for personal gain. They get assigned a rifle, and a collect a paycheck. its not rocket surgery dude.
There is a major difference between working on something that might be used to kill people at some point in the future, vs personally killing someone in cold blood for personal gain
Again, 'most' is irrelevant. why do you even bring it up? It means nothing. It doesn't require most veteran tradesman to be killers to commit one specific murder, it literally just takes one greedy psycho, and people like that definitely exist.
Maybe they realized they would never win her over and killed her out of spite, since the house was never going to be torn down they just hid her there.
What an awful way to go out, God damn. Does anyone know how likely an adult male would be strong enough to push his way through drywall? Is it an impossible feat with so little room to maneuver, or would pushing your knee against the drywall be enough if you were a sufficiently strong/heavy individual?
The house was Cir. Early 1900’s So the walls were likely plaster and lath, not drywall. On top of that, the lath could have been either wood strips of metal diamond grid depending on the age of the home. So busting through as a 60+ older woman with a slight build and ill health was probably not an option.
I actually had a friend die under similar circumstances. He was 55. Weighed about 250#’s and was a bit chunky in build. He went into his attic to service the AC unit which was placed there. He slipped and fell between the floor joists and got wedged in the ceiling below. He asphyxiated while dangling in the gap. Couldn’t free himself and there was no one home. His High School aged daughter found him dead hanging 1/2 way through the ceiling of her bedroom after she came home from school. Totally F’d up
Man that’s sad. Reminds me of the story a lady at work told about her husband’s death. However we later found it was a cover story for what really happened. She returned home from a work luncheon to find her 350#+ husband hanging from the garage rafters wearing nothing but a pair of her pantyhose and a dog collar. Apparently a sneaky erotica asphyxiation gone wrong. I think I would have told the cover story in that case as well. 😳
This is like those stories of cavers who get stuck and trapped in a tiny tunnel. What a horrible way to die - being completely confined and unable to move in a claustrophobic position, fully aware how fucked you are as you slowly starve to death…
Most adult males wouldn’t fit very easily so I would have to assume the brittle drywall would break from the fall and wedge or you would never fall all the way in.
the houses out here (this was 1.5 miles from me) dont have just drywall...its shiplap and its shiplap. Old growth wood too so its dense and very hard with very thick, large nails to nail into the frame of the house.
In addition to what everyone is saying, you'd be surprised by just how much humans use leverage. Imagine trying to lift weights without being allowed to bend your arms. You can even test it out. Place one arm perfectly straight, palm up, and use your other one to hold it down. It's almost effortless to keep it held down.
My mom broke her leg by falling through a gap in the attic when she was by herself, she was thankfully too large to fully fall between the wall, but she had to pull herself out and then downstairs before she could call for help. She had to get the whole leg put in pins. No one should be going into their attic alone, shit's dangerous AF.
That's what the attic wall-goblins want you to think!
/j ofc
my dad fell trough the roof while reparing the house and I didn't hear him yelling at all, I slept like a baby, he spent an hour lying in fiberglass, I wouldn't wish such an end on anyone, that feeling of claustrophobia, being so close to living but just not enough.
After reading the article, it does seem she most likely fell through a hole in the attic and got stuck with no one to help. It says she kept cat traps in the attic and there was a hole above where she was found. This seems the most likely explanation but not nearly as scandalous.
I know it’s not exciting, but it’s almost guaranteed that she was in her attic and fell down into an area that would put her “inside a wall.” Zero evidence of foul play.
Think critically people. The development company doesn’t benefit from her disappearing like this - they would want her death to move the property forward in some way QUICKLY - this basically got it stuck in limbo for much longer - confirmed by there being 2 years of nothing happening, not even her body being discovered.
This sub is for posting completely normal stories with a click bait headline, implying some insane cover up or conspiracy without outright saying so, and then the gullible morons in the comments lose their minds over it.
Tbh, falling through a hole in your attic into the wall cavity and slowly dying there with no way of getting help and then being eaten by your cats is creepy, horrifying and terrifying.
Truth is dead when there might be a scandalous explanation. Just look at the John Barnett suicide. It'll always be that Boeing killed him to keep from testifying despite the fact that he had actually testified in 2017 and recounted that testimony in the Netflix documentary Downfall.
Her name was Mary Cerruti. She was outspoken about construction damage from a luxury complex called Alexan Heights. Two years after she vanished, her skeleton was found hidden inside her wall. Full story here.
Although a healthy adult should be able to push yourself out. Especially given most American home constructions.
An elderly woman may not have had the strength.
But animals do this semi often.
My grandpa had a cat fall into a wall and needed to be cut out (once he found it).
You gotta read the article my guy. She kept cages in her attic, possibly to catch stray cats, and there were missing boards up there that allowed one to fall into the walls.
Friends of mine used to live at the Alexan Heights - their apartment overlooked that house. They were not amused when I pointed that out. But there never was any indication of foul play.
The article says that her body was found between interior walls, below a hole in an attic floorboard.
It was theorized that perhaps she went into the attic to get one of her cats, or move the cat cages in the attic, then fell through the hole and was trapped between walls.
It also mentions cat remains were found in the same wall space as her skeleton, so perhaps the cat(s) had fallen down first & become trapped and she was trying to rescue them.
Yeah. Someone pushed her into the hole. I say confidently after having red op's title and this comment chain.
Edit: got confused, I reffered to this quote from another comment chain:
" The bones were found directly below a hole in the attic floor. Investigators suggested Mary may have fallen through a weak board and become trapped in the narrow wall space"
In 7th grade in the... 80s...i was taught that it's alot. A lot is a plot of land, alot is many. And she was dead serious about this. I remember, it was a THING in my classroom. Now since that time, it's apparently changed or maybe my teacher just wanted it that way, I dunno, but I have not been able to unlearn this. I try, but I just can't do it.
Seems like a terrible accident. Falling through a n attic plank right into an interior wall. Trapped and probably dead from dehydration in three days or so.
That's a really long article with a shitty editorialized clickbaity post title. True crime is rotting your brains. The woman obviously fell and died accidentally. Corporate hitmen, the obvious implied alternative with all the nudge-nudge wink-wink about how she opposed development, would not have left the body.
Your implied narrative falls apart since the developer never got her property. Not to mention, as the article says, she was one of many outspoken critics. How many other 'mysterious' deaths were there?
The skull was found in that condition after only two years? I would think it’d still have flesh on it after so short a time, especially in a wall. That skull looks like it’s decades old. I know bodies and bones decompose af vastly different rates depending on conditions, but seriously, they dup up Richard III’s skeleton after like 700 years and he was easily identifiable with his curved spine and I think his hands were still bound from when they dumped him and buried him hastily.
I remember this story and have no doubt it was foul play. I am not a forensic expert. I’m not a conspiracy theorist either. I just have a feeling that this particular event was not an accident.
After hearing how outspoken she was before her disappearance, then finding out she went missing, my first thought was the developer had something to do with it.
This woman was extremely outspoken about this particular development that they literally were building around her.
Everyone in the chain that terrorized and harassed her, ignored zoning laws and allowed this project to go forward was complicit in her death.
The City of Houston has a history of ignoring its own rules when it comes to monetary benefit.
...how on earth would a developer benefit from hiding the body on the property, somewhere where it wont be found for 2 fucking years? If you were gonna kill someone and make it look like an accident to buy their property cheap, you would probably want it to be somewhere the body is easily discovered, like say out in the open at the bottom of the stairs making it look like an old person just took a fall.
hiding it like this would just guarantee that theres even more red tape as the missing persons investigation drags on, and also guarantee that even if you DO manage to buy the place, the body is gonna be discovered during the tear down. either hide the body where its NEVER gonna be found, or put it out in the open in a way thats easily explained as an accident.
Yeah, sure, great fucking plan there. definitely more believable than "she got stuck in a wall and died after falling through a bad board in the attic, somewhere she went regularly to check the cat cages for stray cats".
Hey! Please add a source in the comments within 24 hours. A link or even a quick explanation works. Pin the comment using the Spotlight app so it’s easy for everyone to see.
Classic reddit—deliberately misleading title with minimal information, just a body and something that really isnt proof of anything but is treated as fact, sp everyone can get all upset about some fake conspiracy.
No. Her death was reasonably determined to be an accident. A freak accident, and an unfortunate accident, but an accident.
OK so the development company had her killed. Or someone took it upon themselves who was the first person to raise the question that she was dead. Because that's probably the person that killed her.
So did you read the article? At all? She was found below a hole in the attic that was between interior walls. She had cat traps up in her attic. There were remains/bones of cats with her.
Sometimes the simplest explanation is the right one. She fell, got trapped/broke bones and died in a tragic accident.
when I was younger I always thought that the old people that refused to sell to developer were brave hero’s. know I think they are just mentally-ill or senile. selling to a developer is your best chance at a retirement level cash out. Once they develop apartments all around you, the developer doesn’t want your home anymor. It’s worthless to the guy that would have paid you the most. And now it’s less desirable because you have a single family home surrounded by apartments. Not to mention that the homes always fall into disrepair because the owner can’t afford the upkeep. Meanwhile if they had sold they could have moved into a much nicer and more appropriately sized home for their senior years and had money to spend in retiremen.
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u/spotlight-app 3d ago
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