If anyone’s seeking true-life inspiration for a Rose for Emily script with a mother-daughter twist, it’s your lucky morning: The NYPD says they discovered a 28-year-old Brooklyn woman living with the decomposed body of her own mother—for as long as three years.
There are 8 million stories in the Naked City, but this one is next-level horrifying.
According to the New York Post, Chava Stirn and her mother Susie Rosenthal both had a history of psychological issues, and Rosenthal hadn’t been seen in a long time. But Stirn refused to let anyone into the apartment. The super finally called the cops when he couldn’t get inside to investigate a leak, who found an apartment packed with garbage, according to the New York Daily News-–and in the kitchen, Rosenthal’s corpse.
They proceeded to spend almost two hours talking a disturbed Stirn out of the apartment.
Today the Post has even more gruesome details, alleging that Stirn was “propping her up at the dinner table and sleeping next to her skeleton every night,” as well as wearing the outfit her mom had on when she died. (Not really sure how they know that, but OK.) Plus:
For the slumber parties, she dragged a chair into the kitchen to snooze next to the corpse — leaving her twin bed covered in stacks of paper.
“She may have been living there with the mom’s remains for two or three years . . . It’s a horrible scene,” the source said.
There’ll be an autopsy, but the cops don’t suspect foul play. Just terrible, terrible mental illness.
“It’s a scene right out of ‘Psycho’ . . . This is one of the weirdest cases I’ve ever seen,” said a “law enforcement source” who is definitely not getting paid enough for this shit.
Photo via Bildagentur Zoonar GmbH/Shutterstock.