Chirky

CINCINNATI, Ohio (AP) -- The mummified body of a woman who didn't want to be buried was found in a chair in front of her television set 2 1/2 years after her death, authorities said.

Johannas Pope had told her live-in caregiver that she didn't want to be buried and planned on returning after she died, Hamilton County Coroner O'Dell Owens said Monday. [She also ate chocolate pudding and applesauce and proclaimed the aliens were coming to take her to heaven.]

Pope died in August 2003 at age 61. Her body was found last week in the upstairs of her home on a quiet street. Some family members continued to live downstairs, authorities said. [Worth repeating: FAMILY MEMBERS WERE LIVING DOWNSTAIRS FROM HER DEAD, ROTTING BODY.] No one answered the doorbell at Pope's home Monday afternoon.

It could take weeks to determine Pope's cause of death because little organ tissue was available for testing, Owens said.

An air conditioner had been left running upstairs, and that allowed the body to slowly mummify, he said. The machine apparently stopped working about a month ago, and the body began to smell.

"Standing outside, one could [literally] smell death," Owens said.

Police went to the house last Wednesday after receiving a call from a relative who hadn't seen Pope in years. They found a staircase behind a door blocked by a basket and climbed to the second floor, where they found the body. [Only blocked by a basket? Do you think the family periodically visited the body?]

It was not clear if any crimes were committed, Owens said. [It seems that intentionally leaving a body to rot in your house would be a crime in itself.]

Authorities did not identify the caregiver, a woman in her 40s who apparently lived in the home with Pope, Pope's daughter and her 3-year-old granddaughter. [I watched a CSI episode last night about this type of mold that grows on human tissue, and when you inhale large quantities of that mold, YOU DIE. I think the daughter and granddaughter should be tested for mold, otherwise their eyes will bulge out and black tar-like sludge will start oozing from behind their eyeball sockets.]

"The caregiver is not someone you'd think was from another planet or really seems off the wall -- (she's) a pretty normal kind of person," he said. "But I think out of loyalty, friendship and love of her friend, (she) decided to keep the body at home." [Yeah. To me, that's not love. That's just gross.]

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press.