By Noon, I Was Holding $400K in Bearer Bonds from a Hoarded Apartment

This happened back in the 1990s-  before computers… . A luxury apartment management company called me in to remediate a death scene involving a long-term tenant. She was elderly, lived alone, and had become nearly impossible to evict. No one had seen her in days, and the death odor had confirmed the worst.

Her apartment was chaos—towering stacks of papers, unopened boxes, and clutter that made walking dangerous. I couldn’t even open the front door fully. Officers had to force their way in, which wasn’t much better when I arrived. 

Once inside, I carefully carved out a path to begin the cleanup. The balcony became my access point for hauling out trash. I still hadn’t located the exact death scene when a maintenance man called me downstairs to meet her only known relative, Jim.

Jim introduced himself as Murta’s cousin, with a half-apologetic smile. I reported to him that his cousin had purchased many different items from mail-order companies, most of which were new in the box. He said he was in the apartment briefly after the police cleared the scene, and the odors were overpowering. “I don’t need anything but important papers or keys,” he said. “She might’ve had a lockbox. If there is anything else inside there, just throw it away. If you think something is salvageable, you’re more than welcome to donate or sell it, but I don’t think you can get the smell out of them.”

That next morning, while clearing a path near the love seat, I tossed what looked like a Texaco bill into the trash. Then something stopped me.

“She didn’t drive.”
I pulled it back out. It wasn’t a bill, it was a statement showing 13,800 shares of Texaco stock.

I froze.

That discovery changed everything. I spent the rest of the day slowly opening envelopes. Stock certificates. Dividend checks. By day’s end, I’d tallied over $187,000 in uncashed dividend checks, dating back to 1987. The number of stocks was easily over 180,000.

Jim, it turns out, was a stockbroker. “I can recover all of this,” he said, wide-eyed. “It’ll take time, but it’s all reclaimable.”

The Shocking Discovery That Came After the Hoarding Cleanup Began

Working around a giant mound of small blue bags, meticulously arranged. I eventually found their grim contents: adult diapers, tightly wrapped and stacked to the ceiling. 

Another astounding discovery was at the bottom of a cabinet. It was a large stack of papers. Just looking at it on the shelf, I thought it would be something I would throw out. Man! Was I mistaken? It was a large stack of Bearer Bonds. 

I could hardly wait for my day to end. I placed the bonds in a separate bag from the rest of the papers I found to turn over to the family. That evening, I brought Jim his daily batch of papers in plastic bags. We’d stack the stinky papers in his garage, and he’d go through them later as his schedule allowed. As he was closing his garage door, I stopped him.

“Wait, there’s one more. I wanted to show you this one last.”

I opened the final bag. Bearer bonds!
Jim gasped. “How much?”
“About $400,000. But you’ll need to verify.”

If you’re not familiar with it, bearer bonds are untraceable. Whoever holds them owns them. Until I handed them to Jim, I legally possessed nearly half a million dollars.

His reaction was childlike joy as he counted the bonds. His wife peeked outside, curious about the noise, and caught both of us laughing. “What’s going on out here?” she asked.

We just smiled. They were both giddy over the find as I drove away that day. I felt like I had just given the best Christmas gift ever. I couldn’t wait to get home and tell my wife about my day.

What Came Next Took This Hoarding Cleanup from Shocking to Unbelievable

Months later, Jim called my office. Among the documents I’d returned, they’d found a deed to a storage unit in a town 70 miles away, with no known family ties. 

While working in Murta’s apartment, I found no personal items other than a few clothes. It was surreal, no tooth or hair brush, no jewelry, nothing. However, inside the storage unit, they uncovered jewelry of hers, her mother’s, and her aunt’s. There was gold, silver, more bearer bonds, and stock certificates, and the find was worth over $1 million.

Jim called to thank us again. “None of this would’ve come to light without your care and attention.”

Sometimes, the real value of a cleanup isn’t what we remove, it’s in what we help people recover.

Written by Don M. McNulty for Crime Scene Cleaners, LLC © COPYRIGHT 2025 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED