Mary Cerruti's neighbours reported her missing in February 2015 after they became concerned about the mail piling up around her letterbox.
Mary Cerruti's neighbours reported her missing in February 2015 after they became concerned about the mail piling up around her letterbox.
Skeletal remains found inside the wall of a home in Houston Heights, Texas, have been identified as the property's former owner - who mysteriously vanished three years ago.
Mary Cerruti's neighbours reported her missing in February 2015 after they became concerned about the mail piling up around her letterbox and a broken window nobody appeared to have been called to fix.
When police finally got around to conducting a welfare check, they found six dead cats inside but no sign of 61-year-old Ms Cerruti, who was known as something of a recluse.
A new apartment complex she opposed had just been built around her home, but no one could figure out where Ms Cerruti had gone.
The house sold at a foreclosure auction later that year, despite Ms Cerruti's fate remaining unknown.
But when the new residents moved in on March 4, 2017, they encountered a startling surprise; they found bones, eyeglasses and a pair of shoes inside a cavity beneath a broken floor board in the attic.
Preliminary results of a post mortem examination indicated the remains belonged to a small, white woman over the age of 40 but confirmation they were the bones of Ms Cerruti didn't come until Tuesday.
Mary Cerruti's Houston Heights bungalow was sold at a foreclosure auction in 2017, two years after she mysteriously vanished.
The Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences, which had been tasked with identifying the skeleton, had no DNA or medical records to work with, according to the Houston Chronicle.
Instead, they had just two pieces of evidence to rely on: a photograph provided by her employer and a video of Mary opposing a proposed development near her home recorded at a Houston Planning Commission meeting in February 2013.
Forensic Sciences Identification Manager Sharon Derrick said the photograph showed that Ms Cerruti had a distinctive, indented chin and a very square jaw. Her chin shape visually matched the shape of bones, she told the Chronicle.
Secondly, it was hoped that the glasses she wore in the video would match the ones found with the remains. They didn't, but investigators found something else.
As she spoke, for a total of 38 seconds, they noticed she seemed to have difficulty moving her jaw, Ms Derrick said.
She said it appeared as if she was moving it slowly and with effort, a condition which matched the shape of the jaw bones and how they fit together.
"We added all the other information that we had," Ms Derrick told the Chronicle.
