'Hoarding,' a compulsive behavioral disorder, led to the death of Mrs.
Marie Rose 59, in her home in Shelton, Washington.
It took two searches before her body was found under a pile of clutter that had collapsed on top of her in a spare bedroom of her residence.
Mrs.
Rose had been dead for 10 hours when the local police found her.
The coroner's office reported the cause of death to be 'asphyxiation' - suffocation.
Mrs.
Rose's husband, Gerald, had returned home and failed to find his wife when he decided to report the matter to the local police.
The cops then went into action, literally crawling over the junk-piles in all the rooms of the house - on their hands and knees! It was obvious that the pile of clutter had collapsed and the possibility of Mrs.
Rose being buried under it was the first suspicion of the police.
It still took them two searches of the pile of clothing and other odds and ends before they found the body of Mrs.
Rose.
Police officials reported that the clutter was over 6 feet high and the house contained several tons of it.
Mrs.
Rose was a compulsive hoarder, a rising concern of psychologists the world over.
When the incident occurred, Mrs.
Rose had apparently been reaching for a broken telephone plug and was perhaps trying to clear some space in the bedroom that contained her thrift stores, of which she was an ardent devotee.
According to David Tolin, Director of the Anxiety Disorders Center at the Hartford Hospital in Connecticut, the disorder is difficult to detect because it is always inside the homes and cannot be detected from outside.
Additionally, people don't want to admit that they are hoarders.
This makes the situation even harder to manage and control.