Post by Graveyardbride on Mar 11, 2014 13:08:43 GMT -5
Mummified mystery: New details on woman found dead in Pontiac garage
PONTIAC, Mich. – She last showed up to work in September 2008. The only known photograph of her is the one above. The next month, Pia Farrenkopf was given a traffic ticket in her hometown of Pontiac for not having proof of insurance, but she never appeared at a court hearing in January 2009, according to state records. It was somewhere around that time, it’s believed, that Farrenkopf died. But it wasn’t until Wednesday that a mummified body, thought to be Farrenkopf, was discovered by a contractor in the backseat of a Jeep parked in the garage of her foreclosed home.
Now investigators are trying to track down dental records that can be used to positively identify the body. “The focus is going to be to identify,” Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said. “There’s nothing that will allow us, at this point, to positively identify her.” Bouchard did not release the woman’s name, but records show Farrenkopf, who would be 49, lived at the ranch home on Savanna Drive in northwest Pontiac.
It’s unclear when the woman with family on the East Coast moved to Michigan, but Bouchard said he believed she came here for her job as a contractor with the now-defunct Chrysler Financial. “She didn’t have children or a husband or a pet when she was here,” Bouchard said. “Preceding that, I don’t know.”
Investigators are looking into what she was doing immediately prior to her death and what caused her death, which may never be determined. Her sister, who lives in the Boston area, has been contacted and is trying to assist investigators in identifying the body. “They hadn’t communicated for years,” Bouchard said of the sisters’ relationship. The Free Press was not able to reach any of the family members who knew her, but talked to a few people in Massachusetts who shared her last name. They said they have a big family spread out across the country.
An autopsy showed no trauma to the body and the case is being investigated as an unknown death. Investigators are treating it like it could be a homicide, so potential evidence is not tainted. “The biggest challenge is trying to forensically determine cause of death,” Bouchard said.
Officials said the woman’s bills were automatically deducted from her bank account, and residents of the quiet middle-class neighborhood said they didn’t notice anything amiss. Some thought she had moved out of the country after the recession hit. Eventually, the $54,000 in her account ran out and the house went into foreclosure, leading to this week’s gruesome discovery by a contractor the bank sent to check out the home.
Police said the body was clothed in a heavy winter coat and the skin had mummified. A key was in the Jeep’s ignition in the off position, police said.
Attorney Mark Johnson revealed that in 2003, he helped Farrenkopf incorporate a business called PIA77, but he didn’t recall any details about it. “I never saw her after that,” Johnson said. State records show that the address listed with the business match the address where the body was found. Johnson said he tried to contact Farrenkopf to give her business documents, but he never heard back. Additionally, court records obtained by the Free Press show that property on Highland Road in Waterford Township was leased to PIA77, doing business as Slender Lady, in September 2003. It was a 60-month lease with payments that were to range from $1,300 to $1,625 a month. The landlord, Hicrest, sued in May 2005, saying PIA77 had broken the lease and seeking more than $101,000 in back rent and attorney’s fees, the records show. The company was awarded those fees in a default judgment that year when PIA77 did not respond to the suit, and a garnishment was filed to get the money from a bank account, according to the documents. There is no indication whether that money was collected. Attorney Adam Kutinsky represented Hicrest, but didn’t recall specifics of the lawsuit. “The case I handled was so long ago,” he said in an e-mail. “And the file was destroyed.”
Other creditors have come after Farrenkopf. Records show she had a 2005 state tax lien of $1,940 and a $3,308 civil judgment against her filed by Capitol One in 2008. In 2012, years after the woman was believed to have died, she had an IRS federal tax lien of $28,086.
Source: Elisha Anderson, The Detroit Free Press, March 7, 2014.