invisiblecarrots:

Milwaukee man commits suicide and lies dead in his home for four years without being noticed or found.

uglyuglyugly:

Everyone tells me they liked David Carter, and they wished him well when he announced he was heading out to New Mexico to live and work.

Except he never went. Carter left a couple notes at his West Allis home, and then he shot himself in the head on the second-floor landing.

The best estimate is that his suicide happened in late 2007. That’s when he quit his job. That’s when he wrote his last check. That’s when he talked of moving away.

And that’s when he disappeared, not quite in plain sight but right there in his longtime home.

His body was not discovered until January. I don’t mean 2008 or 2009 or 2010 or 2011. He was found last month. This year.

For four years, he never paid a bill or emptied his mailbox or pushed a lawn mower or snow shovel. Notices and warning letters were sent his way, but no one ever entered the house to see if he was there and doing all right.

Finally, on Jan. 23, Carter’s 45th birthday, a real estate worker from the Milwaukee County treasurer’s office walked up to the door. A locksmith came along. The house near S. 58th and Madison streets had just been awarded to the county in December in a tax foreclosure.

It’s a visit no one would welcome. But it solved the mystery of Carter’s whereabouts. The workers found his “nearly skeletonized body,” in the words of the medical examiner’s investigative report.

“Spider webs were noted all around the residence,” it said. “A Smith & Wesson 9mm handgun was found lying on the decedent’s chest.”

It hardly seems possible in a dense urban neighborhood that someone’s death could go undetected for so long. Apparently, no one saw or heard or smelled anything that raised alarm.

“We’re trying to figure it out, too. How could it go this far?” said the alderman for that area, Michael Czaplewski. “It’s one of those things where it falls between the cracks, I guess.”

Neighbors and friends thought Carter had moved. The City of West Allis helped cover his absence by cutting the long grass and shoveling snow and adding the cost to his property taxes, which obviously were not being paid.

Utilities were disconnected. The water was shut off after a neighbor reported seeing a stream running out of the house, evidently from a pipe that burst. The mail was stopped when the carrier noticed it piling up. The police say they were never asked by anyone to check on Carter’s welfare.

The house was deemed to be abandoned. In this tough economy, plenty of others are, too. It blended in with these other eyesores.

There was no mortgage company to come after Carter for money, because the house was paid off. He and his mother, Joanne Carter, who was a teacher, had lived there many years. She got cancer and died at the house in 1997 at age 62. David Carter had no siblings and never met his father.

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