A hoarder kept the body of her 95-year-old mother tucked away in a Florida storage unit, and may have done so for nearly 17 years. These hoarders are out here wilding for respect. Keeping a body in a coffin for all those years can you imagine what that smells like. Click below to find out more.
The remains of Ann Bunch were found on Thursday in Clearwater, a city just west of Tampa, according to WTSP 10 News.
The elderly woman died of three heart attacks and a paralyzing stroke in 1994, and was set to be buried, her family told the Tampa Bay Times. She was supposed to be laid to rest in Alabama in a blue coffin made specially for her by a grandson.
But the funeral never took place – Bunch’s daughter Bobbie Barnett Hancock could not afford the expense of transferring the body.
“My mom was terribly embarrassed about not being able to do it herself and basically swore me to secrecy,” Rebecca Fancher told WTSP 10 News.
Fancher could not afford to pay for the storage unit, and that items inside were going to be sold at auction. That’s how authorities discovdered the body.
Fancher is not expected to face criminals charges.
Fancher’s ex-husband says Hancock’s habit of hoarding was to blame for why she secretly kept her mother’s remains hidden away.
“Bobbie had trouble facing the fact that her mother was gone,” John Setlow told the Tampa Bay Times.
Fancher said her mom was born at the beginning of the Depression in 1929 and grew up poor in Alabama. This led her to develop a “compulsion” to obtain things and keep them.
“She couldn’t stand things being wasted,” she told the newspaper.
According to Setlow, Hancock “was a Class A hoarder.”
Hancock’s home, which she shared with her daughter, was declared unihabitable in 2010, the Tampa Bay Times reported. It was discovered to be filled with trash and infested with bugs and animals.
As for Bunch, her remains have been taken to a chapel where they are being kept until arrangements can be made for them to be buried, or cremated.
