STORAGE UNIT RIDDLE
A MYSTERY lingers after the discovery of skeletal remains showed an eerie link to a hoarder who was crushed to death by his own trash.
Robert Ellzey, 70, suffocated under the weight of his possessions inside his unkempt and overgrown home in Ohio.
2
The grisly discovery was made on March 2 by Parma Heights police during a welfare check when they found his lifeless body underneath his own stuff.
Detective Adam Sloan said the medical examiner worked to determine Ellzey’s cause of death.
“It was positional asphyxia, which means that some of the stuff in his house had actually trapped him there,” said Sloan.
“After speaking with some of the neighbors, there were some grumblings about his mother, Lois (Ellzey).”
UNSOLVED CASES
She had not been seen for years and cops worked to locate her.
Lois Ellzey's body has now been identified after Brook Park police officers found remains in a box at a self-storage facility on May 30.
“We were told that she may have passed away in 2012. How long she’s been in the unit, we’re not sure,” said Sloan.
Her cause of death has yet to be determined but it has emerged the unit had been rented out by Robert, said Sloan.
Most read in The Sun
“This is being investigated by the Brook Park Police Department and we are assisting with the investigation, which is still ongoing.”
Investigators are certain she died a decade ago and the neighbors in the area agreed.
“Some of the neighbors mentioned that Lois may have passed away almost 10 years ago or so,” said Sloan.
“We didn’t have any concrete evidence on that. No documents or anything to point to a specific date, time or year.”
Sloan added that there were no missing persons reports filed in connection to Lois, prompting an investigation into her whereabouts.
“Even when we started looking into her, when we ran Lois’ information, there was nothing that popped in our databases that showed her as a missing person.
“To our knowledge, she was never missing in any of our local agencies. [If she were reported missing, out of state [police reports] would have showed up as well.”
But the discovery of Lois’ body has now led to even more questions, with many wondering about the woman’s retirement benefits, which continued to arrive at the home.
“If mom passed away, she’s not listed as deceased. Why is social security still coming in? Why is she still getting retirement checks? That’s obviously what led us to where we’re at today,” said Sloan.
“It’s hard because Robert is not around anymore as well. It appears that the social security and the retirement funds were still coming at the time we found Robert.”
Read More on The Sun
Read More On The Sun
“This investigation is going to continue to go on until we can unfold some information,” he said. “Just a crazy turn of events.”
No immediate family members of Robert and Lois Ellzey have been identified or located and it’s believed that the two only had each other.
2
Topics