Los Angeles police entered a house in North Hollywood to inform the owner Robert Hunt that the property had been foreclosed and ownership would revert to the bank at midnight. They didn’t find Mr. Hunt, but they did find twenty-six cats, three possums, one raccoon and, in a barricaded bedroom, a dried-out husk of a corpse they believe was Hunt’s mother.

The interior of the house was piled with four feet of trash. The bedroom door in question was blocked with debris, which had to be forced aside to allow entry. “We found the remains of an adult,” said Los Angeles police lieutenant Alan Hamilton of the North Hollywood Detective Division. “We were not able to identify who that individual was. I can tell you it was in female clothes—old lady clothes. We guess that the time of death was at least one year (ago).”

Neighbors often saw Hunt in his overgrown front yard, and said he waved when spoken to and seemed like a relatively normal guy. His mother Barbara—when last spotted—used a wheelchair. “It’s a weird Norman Bates-type of thing,” said Tony Danenberg, who lives next door. “I can picture her in a rocking chair, with him dressed up like his mother. It’s very spooky.”