10 Shocking Tales of Bodies Found in Abandoned Houses

Bodies found in abandoned houses raise questions of identity, manner, and cause of death, as well as the reasons that they came to be in the houses in the first place. Unfortunately, the answers to some of these questions are never likely to be known. Those that are determined frequently point to misfortune, drugs, and crime, including, in some cases, murder.

Here are the stories of ten bodies found in abandoned houses.

Related: 10 Shocking Times Murderers Attended Their Own Victim’s Funeral

10 Unidentified Body (Mamou, Louisiana)

On October 20, 2024, a passing bicyclist riding through an alley near Cypress Street in Mamou, Louisiana, was so alarmed by a horrific stench that he dismounted to investigate. Peering through the window of an abandoned house nearby, he saw a dead body.

According to KLFY Lafayette television’s news reporter Jasmine Dean, police did not suspect “foul play,” but identification of the remains and the time, manner, and cause of death awaited autopsy results. The police were asking the community for help in identifying the body.

The neighborhood woman who called police after she was told of the body and had herself confirmed its presence described the condition of the decomposed corpse as “awful,” adding that she would not have been able to tell whether the body was that of a man or a woman were its feminine attire not still recognizable as such.

At the time of an October 22, 2024, KFLY news report, the autopsy had not been conducted. Since then, no other news appears to have been released concerning the woman’s death.^[1]

9 Daniel Mario Preslar

A man’s body discovered in an abandoned house on Lott Road in Mobile, Alabama, has been identified thanks to his pacemaker’s serial number. The deceased was Daniel Mario Preslar, 47. His death, police believe, was related to “a criminal case more than a year old,” according to a report by WKRG TV.

Preslar was reported missing in 2020. His body was buried more than 6 feet (1.8 meters) underground beneath the house, the floor having been removed for this purpose and replaced after the burial was completed. In response to a tip, the police, armed with a search warrant, found the body during the third search they conducted.

According to a FoxNews 10 update, Preslar was killed following “an argument over drugs and money,” which led to his striking a man in the head with a hammer and a woman shooting Preslar with a revolver twice, the latter acting, Lieutenant Mark Bailey, believes, “in self-defense.”

The tipster was the man who buried the body, who, Bailey says, agreed to provide information about the crime if he received assurance that he would not be charged.

In his experience, the lieutenant added, it was almost unheard of that someone would not be charged in such circumstances, and reporter Daeshen Smith said that, despite the assurance of the district attorney that the tipster and the others involved would not be charged, the grand jury had the authority to indict them. However, no further news reports indicated that any suspects were indicted in this case.^[2]

8 Caitlin Crum

As WJHL-TV reports, after the body of Caitlin Crum, 20, was found on November 7, 2021, inside an abandoned house in Greeneville, Tennessee, it was dispatched to the William L. Jenkins Forensics Center, where an autopsy was to be performed. The death of the mother of two was considered suspicious by both Crum’s cousin, Shawn Crum, and her children’s aunt, Ashlee Lynch.

Her car had been abandoned at a church a mile from her home, despite her dislike of walking far, in a part of town she wasn’t known to visit. It was also out of character for her to enter abandoned houses, Shawn said. Lynch added that Crum did not, as a rule, allow lengthy periods of time to pass without calling her family.

In connection to the case, Preston Ronez Moore was found guilty of abusing a corpse, failing to report the discovery of a body, and tampering with evidence, but due to a plea agreement to which Crum’s family consented, he was sentenced to “a cumulative eight-year prison term, with the first 120 days to be served in jail and the rest of the time on probation,” reports Ken Little for the Greeneville Sun. A police news release stated that Crum died from an overdose caused by fentanyl and methamphetamine intoxication. Moore was with her when she died.^[3]

7 Derek Clark and Unidentified Woman

The bodies of Derek Clark, 39, and an unidentified woman were found in abandoned houses in Evansville, Indiana. Clark’s was found in the 200 block of Read Street, and the woman’s in the 1000 block of Harriet Street.

The houses are located in an area of the city in which a lot of people are homeless. As many as 15 to 20 have been in and out of abandoned houses in the area, neighbor Kyle Lannert said. The smell inside the house, he added, was nauseating. Police explained that the July heat led to the “extreme decomposition” of the bodies, and they were unable to say whether the two deaths were related.

As WJHL-TV reports, according to Officer Taylor Merriss, although the city provides great facilities for the homeless, not all of them avail themselves of these shelters, resorting, instead, to other places. He recommended that “neighbors report people coming in and out of abandoned homes.”^[4]

6 Jean-Pierre Renault

A 30-year-old man’s fractured and stabbed body was found in the basement of an abandoned mansion at 12 Rue Oudinot, Paris, France. Workers renovating the derelict mansion discovered the body seven months after the mansion was sold for $41.2 million, reports Michelle Mark for Business Insider.

Documents on the body identified the corpse as that of Jean-Pierre Renault, a homeless man who had died about 30 years ago. Circumstances concerning “his death were unclear,” although it was speculated that he may have died in a fight, either in the mansion or before being brought to it.^[5]

5 Alyssa Ann Rivera

On June 21, 2024, as a Fox 7 Austin TV station report notes, a caller informed police in Austin, Texas, of the location where a tipster had seen a body in an abandoned house on Metcalfe Road. Responding, officers found a woman’s body, which was later identified as that of Alyssa Rivera, 34.

On June 3, police released video footage of Rivera walking down a city street with a man considered to be “a person of interest” in her death. The video, however, is of poor quality, dark, and unclear, and part of the footage is shot from a distance.

DNA evidence suggests that her death could be linked to “the six-year-old murder of Alba Jenisse Aviles,” both of which appear to have been sexual in nature and to have been caused by strangulation. A $1,000 reward may be available for any information that leads to an arrest.^[6]

4 Brian Hendricks

Shots fired! This notification, on January 29, 2024, led to Indianapolis Metropolitan Police’s swarming an abandoned, boarded-up house inside of which they found the body of Brian Hendricks, 31. Investigating Hendricks’s death as a homicide, police soon turned up a suspect: Billy Crawford, whom they arrested.

According to WAFF, an NBC affiliate in Austin, Texas, the abandoned house, police learned, was apparently used as a heroin distribution point. Waiving his Miranda rights, Crawford admitted to driving his van in the area and to arguing with Hendricks inside the house.

Crawford said that he was holding his handgun when Hendricks grabbed it, and the gun fired. Hendricks was shot in the neck and chest. Later, Crawford added that he had acted in self-defense. Crawford was booked for murder and jailed on February 10, 2024.^[7]

3 Unidentified Body (Holly Springs, Mississippi)

According to a WRG TV news account, a father and son team of treasure hunters found something much different than they were hoping to discover: a body in an abandoned house in Holly Springs, Mississippi. On February 24, 2024, Riley Bryant, 23, and his father, Chuck Bryant, spotted something inside a vacant residence that gave them pause, something, Riley said, that didn’t quite “look right on the floor in one of the back rooms.”

They also observed that “the window had been broken out” and that an attempt had been made to fix it back in place, Riley stated. They reported their observations to the local police, who removed the body and cleared the scene. At the time of the report, the coroner had been unable to determine the body’s sex or the cause of death.

Riley believes that the person had “ripped curtains down” and piled on towels in an effort to stay warm, but to no avail, characterizing the individual’s behavior as having reflected the will to live. Thinking about the unfortunate person’s plight, he said, “just gets sadder and sadder.”^[8]

2 Dynasty Miles

Reporting for Detroit television station WXYZ concerning the body of Dynasty Miles, 23, of Southfield, Michigan, who had “been missing since New Year’s Day,” Smita Kaloke said that Miles had driven to a Dearborn Benihana restaurant but never picked up her order.

Miles’s whereabouts were determined when police discovered a woman’s body on the first floor of an abandoned house in Detroit. Police said that she had clearly been “dragged inside against her will,” Kaloke reported.

Police also found clothes that would probably match those that Miles was wearing when she was last seen and were looking for the Dodge Durango into which, it is believed, Miles stepped, leaving her own vehicle at the restaurant.

Miles’s death was ruled a homicide, and her stepmother, Tara Paymon, identified her body.^[9]

1 Sean Hill

The report of an open door led police to the body of Sean Hill, 21, which they found in an abandoned house in Millville, New Jersey. Autopsy results indicated that Hill’s death resulted from homicide. As is the case with other cities, Millville is seeking a solution to vacant homes, which attract crime, including drug activity, wrote newspaper reporter Joseph P. Smith.

According to his follow-up article in the Daily Journal, on November 5, 2017, Justin L. “Spazz” Daughtry, 25, confessed to murdering Hill, of Port Norris, New Jersey, whom he beat to death with a block of concrete inside the abandoned house. The killer was sentenced to 30 years in prison without the possibility of parole. No motive for the murder was stated.^[10]