In Attic, Man Finds Remains of Woman Missing 40 Years

'We assume she lay down to sleep and froze'

By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore, Newser Staff

Posted Sep 5, 2016 3:29 PM CDT

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In Attic, Man Finds Remains of Woman Missing 40 Years — Visitors pass an old Black Forest farm house, the famous Vogtbauernhof, in the open air museum Vogtsbauernhof in Gutach, southern Germany, on Thursday, Aug. 2, 2007. The museum shows how people lived in the Black Forest in earlier years. Every year hundreds of thousands of spectators visit the working... (AP Photo/Winfried Rothermel)

The family of a man in Cloppenburg, northern Germany, apparently doesn't spend much time in the attic. When the 33-year-old son went up to set about renovating the large, unused space last week, he happened upon the remains of a woman who's been missing for nearly 40 years, covered in leaves and straw and wearing pants, shoes, and multiple jackets, reports the Independent. "A discovery of this type is a very unusual event," a police spokesman tells German newspaper Bild. "We assume she lay down to sleep and froze to death in the attic."

Authorities have linked the remains to a 28-year-old woman with three children and a history of mental illness. In the year before she disappeared in 1977, she was declared missing for six weeks before turning up in nearby woods. Police are confident the bones match this missing woman, and say they do not suspect another person's involvement, reports the Local. (One woman found her ex boyfriend living in her attic, and he appears to have had peeping access to her bedroom.)

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