In a gruesome scene ripped straight out of the movie "Psycho," a young Brooklyn woman was discovered to have been living with her mother's skeletal remains inside a cramped apartment for at least a year, New York Post reported. New York police made the startling discovery Monday after receiving a 911 call about a foul smell emerging from the apartment.
Chava Stirn, 28, allegedly lived beside the rotting corpse of her mother, 61-year-old Susie Rosenthal, propping her up at the dinner table before bedding down next to her each night. Investigators said Stirn had been sharing the apartment with her mother, predicting that she may have lived with the corpse for up to a year.
The horrific discovery was made Monday after a leak in the dead woman's apartment began dripping through the lobby ceiling, causing the building superintendent to go check on the apartment, according to New York Daily News. Although he found the door ajar, a lot of garbage in the apartment prevented him from opening the door, but he was still able to peer inside and see Stirn sitting at the kitchen table. After failing to communicate with her, he called building management, who then called police.
Authorities entered the residence on 15th Avenue in the Borough Park neighborhood after arriving around 5 p.m. Monday. After two hours of coaxing the young woman, who was threatening to harm herself, Stirn was taken to Maimonides Medical Center for psychiatric evaluation, Huffington Post reported. Officers then conducted a search and uncovered skeletal remains in the apartment, according to WABC-TV. Investigators said they believe the corpse, hidden beneath piles of garbage, is the mother of the woman living in the apartment.
"There was nothing to take out for burial, just bones," said one neighbor, who wished not to be named. "Roaches, rats, mice... she was eaten up. They didn't eat the walls, they had something better, unfortunately."
Building tenants said Stirn and her mother were recluses who never stepped out of their apartment. "I never even saw the door opened," said one neighbor. A foul odor had also been coming from the apartment for a long time, said Mayer Berger, a spokesman for Chesed Shel Emes, a Jewish burial service for the poor. "That stench stayed for months and months," he said. "To have someone live with that odor for months and months is beyond me. The (smell) was on and off. One man who lives upstairs was very upset with himself that he didn't call sooner."
Long-time building tenant Amin Ashrafov described the odor as overpowering. "I've never smelled something like that before," Ashrafov told DNAInfo New York.
The eery living arrangements have been compared to those featured in the hit 1960s Hitchcock thriller "Psycho", where Stirn even dressed like her mother - wearing the same black outfit and shoes that the 61-year-old was wearing when she died, according to the New York Post.
An autopsy will be conducted by the Medical Examiner's Office to determine the cause of death.
