Woman's dead body lies in flat for 35 years

[Sequoia]

ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) -- Governments have changed. War erupted and ended. Neighbors had children, and then grandchildren. But Hedviga Golik never left her tiny apartment in Croatia's capital -- until her mummified body was carried out this week, 35 years after she died.

Police said Friday that no one ever reported Golik missing and no one has come to claim her body.

Residents of her loft building in downtown Zagreb had broken into Golik's flat after deciding that the apartment should belong to them, and not to her. Startled by the remains in bed, they called police.

Forensics experts said Golik likely died in 1973, about the time a neighbor last saw her. Expert Davor Strinovic said she seemed to have died of natural causes, but "it's almost impossible to say for certain" after so much time.

Some of Golik's neighbors claimed she had talked about going abroad.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/05/16/croatia.body.ap/index.html

I wonder why the tenants thought the apartment should belong to them? Maybe they thought she was gone. Poor woman, no one to miss her.

[Midlodemocrat]

1. Wow. What a sad story. No one missed her at all.

Must have been a very lonely life.

[BarenakedLady]

2. Who paid the rent for 35 years?

Or was it bought and paid for? Still, there must have been bills, taxes...something that would have alerted someone. How sad that no one in the world cared about her. :(

[lost-in-nj]

3. that is sad.....

to die alone and be forgotten :(

I wonder also whey the neighbors thought they should have the apt.

and the obvious question....

didn't the people she owed money to
landlord, who ever else
notice she wasn't paying....

wow


lost

[LeftinOH]

4. Apaprently, apartments were state owned & assigned.. so that explains the lack of

rental payment.. but it still doesn't explain why- after 35 years, a neighbor decides that the deceased hasn't been seen in a while. (??)

[grasswire]

5. I'm waiting to see that on BBC How Dirty Is Your House?

A long-dead body. Right there under the rug, cobwebs and mouse droppings.

[pokerfan]

6. Meanwhile in Wisconsin

http://www.startribune.com/local/18861259.html">Religious group in Necedah was collecting dead woman's Social Security

Prosecutors believe Tammy Lewis kept Magdeline Alvina Middlesworth's remains in the bathroom of the Necedah home Lewis shared with her two children for two months after the elderly woman died.

[Blue Diadem]

7. I wasn't thinking very highly of her neighbors until I found more info:

Looks like they wanted to know what was going on for years.

http://www.javno.com/en/croatia/clanak.php?id=148109

snip:

Despite numerous tenants` actions, who noticed nobody was using the flat in 1970, as well as the city services, which requested the apartment to be broken into and examined, nobody reacted to their pleas for nearly four decades.

Police did not want to break into the apartment in 1991

Tenant Mirko Horvatic sent a memo to the police in 1991, which was signed by the tenants’` council, requesting they examine the flat, above all because of their co-tenant’s health and maintenance of the apartment, utility services and rent which all the neighbours have been paying for the late woman for years.

More at above link.

[CJCRANE]

8. That's taking

the right to privacy a little too far!

[Boojatta]

9. "utility services which all the neighbours have been paying for"

Okay everybody: remember to turn off the lights before you die.

[Blue Diadem]

10. I wonder if the fridge was still working after all that time.

Dumb thing to think of but it just crossed my mind..all I could think of was why was there no odor.

I don't understand why the other tenants would have to pay her rent and utilities not unless everything was divided equally. :shrug:

Definitely a strange story.