Wife Complained About Smell: Body of Husband Found in Hoarder Home After Missing for Nearly a Year

The body of a missing man has been found right in his own home, after his wife reported him missing almost eight months ago. Police say that Richard Maedge of Troy, Illinois was found even after searches of the property had taken place months prior. While the family of the once-missing man are calling out police for not searching properly, the circumstances of the story indicate that the living conditions the man and his wife subjected themselves to played a larger role in what happened. This story is tragic, but it also highlights just how dangerous hoarding up your home with junk can really be.

Boston 25 News reports that the body of Richard Maedge was found in a closet in his home after he had been reported missing close to a year ago. It was his wife who ultimately discovered his remains when she was looking for Christmas decorations. When the woman reportedly looked in the closet for the bin of items, his mummified body is what greeted her. The woman is who reported him missing in the first place. Jennifer Maedge reportedly came home from work sometime in April to find Richard missing, but his car and other belongings were left behind. Police supposedly searched the property for evidence surrounding his disappearance back in April, but couldn’t find anything — which could probably be attributed to the massive hoard of stuff that cluttered the home.

Months later, Jennifer Maedge called police to report a stench in her home, and then she had a plumber come out and check her pipes and cap one to prevent the stench from being in her home. It’s curious that she chose to call the police first, which indicates that she might have suspected what the smell was all along. Eventually the smell went away, but this is likely because of the mummification process, which eventually produces no smell. At any rate, the smell the missing man’s wife had reported in the first place was definitely the stench of the man decaying right there in the home with her.

Police are criticized, but where was the family during all the hoarding?

While police are certainly easy to criticize — and for excellent reasons — it looks like they did all they could in the search for this man when it came to looking for evidence on the property. As reports share, this home is a hoarder house. If Jennifer Maedge was unable to navigate her own home to find her husband for eight months, then clearly that’s the same reason authorities were unable to find him as well. They even reportedly searched the property after she reported the smell, but were still unable to find anything. It was probably easy for them to assume that the smell had something to do with the living conditions of the place, as well. However, the stench of a decaying body is unique — and that should have triggered a search with cadaver dogs. The only problem with that, is that not every department has them at their disposal.

While the loved ones of Richard Maedge criticize the police for their apparent lack of action in this case, they should really be asking themselves where they were when he and his wife cluttered their home up so much that he was even able to go missing inside of it for nearly a year. Hoarding of this magnitude is clearly indicative of mental illness, and both Richard and his wife have evidently been left with no intervention at all. Furthermore, it’s being reported that Richard Maedger may have committed suicide, which is no surprise given the state of how he and his wife were living. So while we all wish police could be more effective in finding missing people, this story clearly illustrates a failure in our society when it comes to people in need of mental help.