New Homeowner Finds Body of Former Tenant in Basement: Police

A new homeowner has found the body of a previous tenant in the basement, according to police in Ohio.

Officers from Cleveland Heights Police Department were called on Tuesday morning to a property in the 2700 block of Noble Road, where the human remains were discovered.

The homeowner told police they had just bought the home at a sheriff's sale and had come to inspect the property, according to ABC News 5 in Cleveland.

Officers at the scene said there were no visible signs of trauma on the body. A police investigation later determined that the human remains were a 71-year-old woman. She has not been named.

County property records seen by ABC News 5 show that the woman had previously lived in the home.

About 4,400 unidentified bodies are recovered in the U.S. each year, according to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, a resource center set up by the Department of Justice. It added that, on average, 3,400 of those bodies were identified within one year.

In total, 600,000 individuals go missing in the U.S. every year, NamUs said.

Officers in Cleveland Heights did not comment on how long the woman's body had been in the basement at Noble Road, or why the human remains had not been discovered before the sheriff's sale.

Newsweek has contacted the Cleveland Heights Police Department for comment.

In September, mummified remains were found in a bathtub in an Arizona home after police responded to reports of a burglary.

Neighbors told Bullhead City Police Department officers they had not seen the resident in about a year and believed she had moved away.

When police entered the home in Mohave County, they found Christine Lee Walters, 65, rummaging through the property—and a body in a mummified state, believed to be the homeowner.

Walters was booked on two counts of burglary. She has not been arrested in connection with the discovery of the body.

Earlier in September, a body was found inside a vehicle in the parking lot of a Walmart store in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

Members of the public alerted police after they spotted the body in a vehicle that was parked close to the Walmart at 8301 Rogers Avenue at about 1:18 p.m. on Monday, September 5.

A police release said: "Upon arrival, it was discovered that bystanders had located the 50-year-old white male inside the vehicle. The bystander called 911 to report the incident. The investigation is now underway and more information will be released when available and appropriate."