Body Discovered Four Years After Suicide

Man's body lays undiscovered in home for FOUR YEARS after suicide - and is only discovered by realtor who came to repossess house

• David Carter, who would have been 45 this January, quit his job and told friends he was moving to New Mexico in late 2007
• His bills and taxes went unpaid for four years before anyone went in the house to start the foreclosure process
• Found Carter's 'nearly skeletonized' body on the stairs

By Meghan Keneally

A man's body has been found in his home after it lay undiscovered there for four years following his suicide.
David Carter, who neighbours said was well-liked, told friends he was moving from his home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to New Mexico in 2007.
A real estate worker who went into his suburban home to repossess it last week - after bank officials finally realised he hadn't paid the bill for four years - and found his remains. 
He is believed to have shot himself with a handgun.

The body of David Carter was found in his house and is thought to have killed himself in 2007

The employee of the Milwaukee County treasury office- who entered his home in the West Allis neighborhood in order to start the repossession process- found Mr Carter's 'nearly skeletonized' remains on his stairway, a gunshot in his head, and a handgun on his chest.
No bill or income tax has been paid by Mr Carter since late 2007, so that is the approximate date-of-death that officials have given him, but there is no way to be exact. 

 

'We're trying to figure it out, too. How could it go this far?' said local government worker Michael Czaplewski.

'It's one of those things where it falls between the cracks, I guess,’ he told the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel.

Unexpected: The city of Milwaukee mowed his lawn and shovelled his snow since he went missing, and sent bills totalling $37,000 for the services that went unpaid

Though Mr Carter clearly did not maintain the house, the city took it upon themselves to shovel and mow his lawn through the years and then charged him for those services; his bill is now $37,000 for the years of maintenance.
Mr Carter, whose 45th birthday would have been January 23 of this year, lived and studied in Milwaukee, and school records show him attending the local high school and earning a college degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
As an only child raised by a single mother, Mr Carter had few close relatives after his mother died following a battle with cancer in 1997.
Mr Carter's cousin, Kevin O'Neill, said that he became emotionally withdrawn and began drinking heavily after his mother's death.

His remains were found last week when a city employee came to the house to start the foreclosure process

In spite of his grief, he moved on to work as a nuisance control officer for the city of Milwaukee from 1999 to 2007. He resigned from that job in September 2007 and said he was planning to move to Albequerque, and then he disappeared. 
'The people closest to him knew he moved so nobody ever did bother to think that anything was wrong with him,' said his high school friend Teresa Bornheimer.
Since his body was found, more details are being discovered as people try to understand how he could have been dead in his own house for four years without anyone noticing.
Medical records show that he was listed as the father of a girl who is now 14 years old. He and the mother never married and the mother, whose name has not been released, said that the last time she saw him was in 2006.

Certain: His 'nearly skeletonized' body was identified using dental records

Though he clearly was not a constant part of the girl's life, he did keep her in his thoughts as investigators found a note which had a list of his possessions that he bequeathed to her.
'My jaw just dropped when I found out. I told myself maybe it's a bum living at the house,' said Ms Bornheimer. 
The decomposed body was identified as Mr Carter using dental records.
The profits from the sale of his house, which originally belonged to his mother, will go to the county but because of the discovery that he had a daughter, she could likely challenge the county for the profits.