Stories of a Chicago Police Officer

Remembering 1980, the heat wave that took so many lives, it was months later when Murphy and his partner responded to that ‘Check the Well Being’ call. They were met on the front stairs and ushered into the house by a relative of the woman owner. This elderly woman had not been heard from in months.  Being distant relatives, they never thought to check on her during the earlier months when the heat index hit triple digits. 
No lingering smells and no signs of flies. Murphy and his partner searched the house. The first floor was clear. The partner went downstairs, and Murph went upstairs, all clear. Murph realized there was another set of stairs leading to the upper attic.  Murph immediately saw a pair of brown legs sticking out from a trapdoor. It was the missing 80-year-old, mummified. The body was a rubbery consistency, dried, with no signs of any fluids. She was mummified. She apparently had gone to the upper attic, where she kept her canned fruits and vegetables. She was placing a new batch of self-canned goods into the attic when the trap door dropped down and pinned her in such a position that she couldn’t extricate herself. She either died of dehydration, heat, or suffocation. This was the first and only time in a long list of unusual deaths that Murphy ever saw a mummy in real life. Eerie!