A few hours after Thanksgiving in 2009, relatives reported the disappearance of Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada († 25). He was last seen leaving his home during a snowstorm. , although no one heard from him for the next ten years, investigators eventually discovered the shocking reason why he did not return.
- Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada left home during a snowstorm.
- The family assumed he was hallucinating and went to the supermarket where he worked.
- His remains were only discovered ten years later.
- Police found that he fell behind the coolers in the store and got stuck there.
- The supermarket operated for several years without anyone finding out.
Larry was a young man from the American state of Iowa who worked at a local supermarket called No Frills. But during Thanksgiving, he left his parents’ house completely barefoot, apparently suffering from hallucinations, according to relatives. “He heard voices telling him to eat something sweet. He felt his heart was beating too hard. He thought it would help him,” his mother said, adding that he has not been seen since..
Although the police assumed for a long time that the young man had simply evaporated, a decade later they discovered the unexpected truth. In 2019, when workers began clearing out the shuttered supermarket, which had been out of business for the past three years, they found human remains in a narrow gap between giant coolers and a wall.
A subsequent DNA test confirmed that the body wedged in this confined space was indeed that of the missing Larry. Investigators found no signs of wrongdoing and concluded that the young man fell behind the cooling boxes where he remained trapped until he died.
It’s really disturbing that the shop continued to operate for years after the tragedy and no one noticed that there was a dead body inside. Since they only closed the business for good in 2016, this means that Larry’s body was lying behind the refrigerators for about seven years, unbeknownst to customers or staff.
Employees of the supermarket confirmed that they routinely climbed on top of the cooler boxes while working in their spare time. The problem was that the devices were about 3.5 meters high. It suggests that if Larry was conscious after the fall and tried to call for help, his screams were most likely drowned out by the noise the refrigerators made during operation.
The former staff member also admitted that he noticed an unpleasant smell while at work, but attributed it to something else, such as spoiled food. “Such cases are extremely unusual, especially in this area. We often meet missing persons, but this is something completely different,” said Sergeant Danielson, who was originally assigned to the case in 2009.
