Too much stealth? Sad story!

[mockturtle]

This is one of those 'should never have happened' situations.  It is heartbreaking that no one cared enough to notice her missing and also that she was so stealthy no one checked her out.  You would think at least the rehab facility she had just left would have done some follow up.  
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...-woman-lauren-moss-body-car-walmart/80220276/

 

[Konaexpress]

This is so horrible! She had no one?

John

 

[Patrick46]

Sadly, there's a lot of folks like this out there. Some people just have nobody.

 

[SoulRaven]

It doesn't matter whether or not she had anyone, what matters is that a vehicle parked and not moving for over 48 hours in a store's parking lot should have been investigated.

 

[blars]

What difference would living in a house have made? I suspect that bodies in vehicles are detected sooner than bodies in houses.

 

[TMG51]

What difference would living in a house have made?  I suspect that bodies in vehicles are detected sooner than bodies in houses.

Thanks, this is my thinking also. There's no reason anyone should take this personally in a vandwelling context. I personally don't want encouragement for businesses to check stationary vehicles any more than they already may.

 

[BradKW]

Just last week a few houses down from current job, a man was discovered dead in the cottage he was renting. Died naturally, but nobody noticed for nearly 2 months...owners came in town and attempted to collect rent. These things happen anywhere...

 

[RVTravel]

They happen anywhere and everywhere. It's a common way people are found passed away. Esp in homes, not so much cars.

 

[flying kurbmaster]

This proves one thing, that you can be 100% stealth for several months,
I am sure she had people but remember that she was a user, bad enough to need rehab. She likely had already burnt a lot of bridges and also likely to have disappeared for blocks of time indulging in her habit prior to this, which everyone close to her most likely knew. The rehab people also would have known that there was nothing they could do to stop her short of chaining her to a post. It is certainly sad but even if she had a million people that cared about here like Amie Winehouse nothing they could do, would have changed things, this was her journey, it is a total waste, such a beautiful young women in the prime of her life, the hole just got too deep and black to allow any light in.

 

[mockturtle]

She was only '100% stealth' because she was dead. No activity in and out of her vehicle. People probably assumed it was an abandoned car.

 

[Optimistic Paranoid]

Where I live, the county has an Office for the Aging and they run a program you can voluntarily sign up for where they will call you once a day to ask how you are doing.  If you don't answer the phone, the Sheriffs Office will be notified and one of their patrols will stop and check on your welfare.

Of course, that only works for people in sticks and bricks . . .

Regards
John

 

[WildTrappist]

Lots of people have no one. I am a person with no family and with my nomad lifestyle, I could be missing several weeks before anyone noticed. It feels sort of lonely and also liberating. I just put all of the info I want 1st responders to know under the ICE contact in my phone.
Check out this movie and story about a similar yet entirely different situation.
dreamsofalife.com/home/newspaper

Its a very interesting movie worth the watch.
A

 

[Belinda2]

Focusing on Salinas, CA:
I have traveled to CA about 7 times. Salinas is one of those towns that really sticks out in my mind. It is so casual and accepting. I had a small, extremely high profile RV at the time and I had zero problems living in it in full view parked three days straight. I don't think I ever lived at any place that was so accepting.

 

[ascii_man]

The worst-case scenario seems to be in a vehicle in a garage of your S&B house:
http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/2015/02/28/mystery-mummified-body-year-later/24188637/

And this will probably be used in typical "worst-first" thinking: One person one time was dead in a van, so we need to aggressively inspect all vehicles every few hours or so. Can't have any privacy or freedom; that would be un-American and someone might get hurt!

Not to be critical of someone who was down on her luck and lonely (I've been both), but I've always had at least one of the following: job, volunteer activity, family, friends, church, and hobby group: usually not all (unfortunately), but if you don't have even one of those, then I humbly submit that you have far bigger problems than potentially being found dead in your vehicle.

 

[gcal]

It doesn't matter whether or not she had anyone, what matters is that a vehicle parked and not moving for over 48 hours in a store's parking lot should have been investigated.

Make up your mind. Either you want to be bothered and chased out of Walmart's parking lot or you do not. Depending on the store and where she was parked, the car may not have stood out. You can go to the 24 hour store in our area any time, day or night, and find shoppers' cars in the lot clustered by the front.

She had family. They cared enough to report her missing. Some people are lost in their own lives and do not respond to reaching out. We do not know what her issues are or whether it was suicide or not. Most of the horror in the reactions here seems to be able what happened after she was already dead and beyond caring.

 

[ascii_man]

Make up your mind. Either you want to be bothered and chased out of Walmart's parking lot or you do not.

Agreed

She had family. They cared enough to report her missing. Some people are lost in their own lives and do not respond to reaching out. We do not know what her issues are or whether it was suicide or not. Most of the horror in the reactions here seems to be able what happened after she was already dead and beyond caring.

This is insightful a lot of people have been "found dead" in their homes; Dennis Ritchie (Harvard PhD, Bell Labs, co-creator of Unix) was found dead in his house in Berkeley Heights, NJ (median household income $132k).

So about the only way to prevent a death like this is for someone to have been checking up on her on an hourly basis or so. And nobody wants that. So after you're dead, what difference does it make if they find your body in an hour or a month?

 

[MK7]

It doesn't matter whether or not she had anyone, what matters is that a vehicle parked and not moving for over 48 hours in a store's parking lot should have been investigated.

They believed it to be suicide. If this is true, then there's not much that can be done within 48 hours as it's quite easy to take your own life in just a few hours....even a few minutes or just one second, depending how you want to die. So investigating earlier would just mean that they'd have a fresher dead body instead of one that's been decomposing for months.

And this would be an excellent Walmart to park at if you're a vandweller, although probably not anymore.  It's sad, but it could be the same result if someone wanted to commit suicide in their $10 million, secluded beach house.

 

[accrete]

My wife and I've discussed these sort of scenarios and what-if events.
What I lean towards is IF I survive my wife (we will be of course on the road full time in something as we are full time rv peeps currently) I will continue to be in contact with our adult kids via whatever technology evolves at the time. We are also looking into the SPOT style tech.

I fully believe I will be traveling alone. That doesn't bother me as my wife and I are happy hermits. Don't know how "Happy" I will be as a solo-hermit if that takes place, but not gonna dwell on it either.

: ) Thom