Skeleton of dead man found inside his flat 15 years later | World | News

The remains of a man believed to have passed away 15 years ago were found in his home in Spain yesterday after floodwater from Storm Alice began seeping into the flat below.

Firefighters, summoned by an elderly neighbour to investigate the issue, discovered part of his skeleton in his bedroom and other bones in the living room, reportedly moved there by pigeons who had begun nesting in the dilapidated property.

Stunned locals residing in the six-storey apartment block in the east coast city of Valencia recall the last time they saw the retired builder, identified only by his first name Antonio, was in 2010.

The father-of-two had been living alone in the top-floor flat after separating from his wife and had no contact with his two adult sons, according to local reports.

Neighbours believed he had moved to a retirement home. His utility bills and community fees were up-to-date as they were being directly debited from his bank account, which was still receiving his pension payments.

Police are continuing their investigation into the macabre discovery, although the pensioner, who would have been 86, is thought to have died of natural causes.

Court officials were seen exiting his flat late yesterday in the working-class neighbourhood of Fuensanta in Valencia, carrying white bags containing his remains as the heavy rain associated with the grim discovery continued to lash the area.

The son of a woman living below Antonio’s flat, who called in firefighters when water started leaking into her place from above, told local paper Las Provincias: “First of all I phoned the insurance people but they told me I had to call the fire brigade. The water was coming into my mum’s bedroom as well through the ceiling of her bathroom and the dining room.

“It had been years since we saw the man living above and as his windows were broken and it had been raining heavily, I thought initially the water was coming in through them and leaking down. We managed to see from a look outside that the problem was on a terrace where it turned out a glass was blocking the guttering.

“When the firefighters and police accessed the property, they found the body of someone who had been dead several years, as well as lots of pigeons. The place was in a really bad state. The last time we saw the owner was in 2010.

“The police told me there wasn’t a lot left of his body and it was basically a skeleton.”

The discovery was made around 4.45pm yesterday. The body was removed and taken to Valencia’s Institute of Forensic Medicine around 9pm.

A National Police homicide group has been put in charge of the ongoing investigation ahead of a post-mortem due to start today, although there is nothing at this stage to indicate the death could be linked to a crime.

Storm Alice is continuing to cause problems on Spain’s east coast and the Balearic Islands. Yesterday evening Ibiza suffered fresh flooding as the army was called in again to help local emergency responders for the second time in less than a fortnight.

One well-placed source said today: “If it hadn’t been for the heavy rain this man’s remains would probably still be lying undiscovered.”

In March, the mummified body of a woman thought to have died more than a decade earlier was found in a Costa del Sol flat. The grim discovery was made by a squatter who forced the lock on the property to access it with his 11-year-old daughter. The pair fled the apartment in Malaga when they came across the body, after alerting neighbours.

Police sources said at the time that skeletonisation, which is the final stage of decomposition when a corpse’s soft tissues have decayed or dried to the point that the skeleton is exposed, had set in. Initial tests by forensic experts dated the time of death to around 14 years earlier.

In April 2023, a man’s mummified corpse was discovered alongside that of his daughter’s at their flat in Linda-a-Velha near Lisbon, after firefighters and police were called to investigate a bad smell coming from it. Reports at the time said the dead woman, named only as Anabela, is thought to have died around a week earlier after living with the body of her pensioner dad for 15 years.

In May 2021 police discovered the decomposing body of a woman in the northern Madrid neighbourhood of Fuencarral, said to have been partially eaten by her pet cats.

Five of the seven animals were also found dead when officers entered the property. The dead woman was named at the time as Clara Ines Tobon. Neighbours told local press they believed the Colombian may have died from Covid.

In September 2019, it emerged a dog survived the death of his cancer-stricken owner by eating part of his body as he lay undiscovered in his Madrid flat for around a month.

The dead man reportedly had no flesh left on his legs where the animal devoured his lower limbs to stay alive. A neighbour raised the alarm after returning from holiday to discover a rancid smell she mistook at first for a dead rat.

The dog was sedated before being taken to an animal rescue centre after police got firefighters to force their way into the ground-floor flat in the Madrid neighbourhood of Ciudad Lineal and made the gruesome discovery.

Doctors were said at the time to have estimated the dead man, a 56-year-old prison chef known only as Matias, had died around a month earlier after succumbing to lymphatic cancer.