Buzz
The appeal of purchasing forgotten storage units is undeniable. People eagerly search through the discarded belongings of others, hoping to uncover something valuable. Yet, true treasures are hard to come by. More often than not, they only find strange and unusual items.
10. A Chilling Discovery of Murder Evidence
While attending a storage unit auction in Colorado, Rick Ratzlaff came across a shed containing police car lights. Upon purchasing the unit, he uncovered a collection of police-related items, including boxes of court documents and sheriff deputy uniforms with the name Robert Dodd emblazoned on them.
Ratzlaff sifted through the boxes and uncovered multiple envelopes marked 'evidence.' Inside, he found a bloody rope, an axe, piles of documents, and socks soaked in blood. He immediately contacted the police to report his unsettling find.
The items were connected to an unsolved murder case: 17-year-old Candace Hiltz had been fatally shot seven times in her home. Just five days prior to her death, Hiltz had an intense confrontation with a local deputy.
The deputy had been questioning Hiltz’s brother, a suspect in a trespassing case. Hiltz grew angry over the officer's harsh demeanor, which led to a heated argument. She accused him of accepting envelopes from known drug dealers, and the deputy left in a fury, threatening her with arrest.
Three days after the altercation, the Hiltz family discovered their dog’s lifeless body in the woods behind their home. The dog had been bound to a tree with a rope and brutally killed with an axe. Both the rope and axe were later found in Dodd’s storage unit.
Two days following the murder of their dog, Hiltz’s mother returned home to find a bloodstained house. Inside, she discovered her daughter’s body hidden beneath a bed. An autopsy revealed that Candace had been shot seven times with three different firearms.
The murder of Hiltz remains unresolved. The evidence recovered from the storage shed was handed over to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. Dodd was placed on administrative leave and later faced charges of official misconduct and mishandling public records.
9. A Tragic Family Murder
In the Seattle area, George Gennai became curious when he discovered that someone had rented a storage unit for 12 years. Hoping to uncover valuable antiques, Gennai purchased the unit and began to sift through the contents. After peeling away thick landscaping plastic and digging through a meter (3 feet) of clothing, Gennai was overwhelmed by a horrific smell that reminded him of Vietnam. When he opened a trash bag, he was horrified to find a human skull.
He immediately called the police, who examined the remains. The medical examiners identified the bodies as 35-year-old Barbara Bender and her two sons, 15-year-old Mark and eight-year-old Brian. The family had been brutally killed with blunt force to the head. In the locker, police discovered a hatchet with blood and hair remnants.
The Bender family had been missing since 1980. They were last seen the day after Barbara filed for divorce, while they were loading a U-Haul. Investigators began to look into Barbara’s estranged husband, Mark, who had rented the storage locker.
Mark was arrested and admitted to the murders. He had kept the bodies of his former family hidden in the storage unit. However, after Bender’s new wife stopped paying the rental fees, the contents of the locker were auctioned off. Bender was charged with three counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to 80 years in prison.
8. Methamphetamine Lab Discovery
Steve and Ken Bohannon frequently purchased storage units to resell items, and they were excited when they acquired a unit in Rancho Cordova, California, for $80. Upon inspecting their find, it appeared to be a typical haul. However, they soon came across boxes labeled with the words 'danger' and 'poison'.
Curious, the Bohannons opened the boxes to reveal pipes, beakers, and gas masks. Alarmed, they contacted the police, who arrived to inspect the contents. Authorities discovered that the boxes contained hazardous, vintage equipment used for meth production. The materials were so toxic that hazmat specialists were called in. In addition to the lab gear, a 20-liter (5-gallon) drum half-filled with meth was also found.
Police are uncertain whether the meth lab was actually operated inside the storage unit. Investigations are ongoing, and detectives are working to track down the previous owners.
7. A Shocking Discovery of Human Bones
After Robert Wood passed away, his storage unit in Kentucky was auctioned off. The buyers, initially disappointed with their find of just clothing and an electric train collection, soon stumbled upon a few large yellow grocery bags. Their initial curiosity quickly turned to dread when they discovered the bags contained human bones.
The men took the bones to the storage facility office, where the manager contacted the police. The authorities sent the remains to the state medical examiner’s office, which determined that the bones belonged to Doris Wood, Robert's wife. Doris had been missing for 16 years after disappearing while on her way to visit her sister.
Robert had told the couple’s daughter, Jennifer, that Doris had left them. However, Jennifer had doubts about her father’s story. Robert had given Doris’s ring to a family friend, even though Doris never took it off. Police searched the family’s house but found no evidence.
The circumstances surrounding Doris’s death are still under investigation. The state of her remains has made it challenging for authorities to determine the cause of death. All they know is that her femur bones had been sawed in half. Police plan to conduct another search of the family’s home.
6. The Discovery of Human Ashes
Bill Smith had been attending storage unit auctions for two decades when he made an unusual discovery in Nevada: 27 urns filled with human ashes. The unit had previously belonged to April Parks, a court-appointed guardian responsible for making legal and financial decisions for senior citizens. After her wards passed away, instead of locating their families, she simply stored their remains in the unit.
Parks stopped paying for the unit when she was incarcerated. She was facing over 200 charges, including theft, perjury, and exploitation of elderly clients. Parks had embezzled more than $550,000 from those under her care.
Parks would steal almost all of the money from her clients' bank accounts, leaving only a small amount behind, but she failed to assist her clients. Her victims included those whose names were on the urns. If convicted, Parks and her employees could face decades in prison.
5. The Discovery of a Severed Leg
Shannon Whisnant thought he had made a fortunate find when he bought a barbecue smoker at a storage unit auction in South Carolina. However, his excitement turned to horror when he opened the smoker and found a human leg inside. He immediately contacted the police, who took possession of the leg. Whisnant’s unsettling discovery made local news.
John Wood came forward to claim the leg. It turned out that Wood’s leg had been amputated after a plane crash that also killed his father. Wood had preserved his leg through embalming and kept it as a memento of his father. Unfortunately, the tragedy led to a drug addiction, and Wood eventually fell behind on his storage unit payments.
Whisnant refused to return the leg. He had turned the smoker into a tourist attraction and hoped to profit from the leg. Wood was furious that Whisnant was turning his leg into a 'freak show' and decided to hire a lawyer.
The police returned the leg to Wood, which angered Whisnant. Both men then took their dispute to a TV court, where Judge Greg Mathis presided over the case. Mathis ruled that Whisnant must return the leg to Wood, while ordering Wood to pay Whisnant $5,000.
4. Gruesome Body Parts Discovery
Philip Knight purchased a storage unit at an auction in Pensacola, Florida. As he was going through the contents, he noticed a strange odor. After some searching, he traced the smell to containers filled with human body parts.
Knight contacted the authorities, who launched an investigation into the storage unit. They uncovered 10 cardboard boxes, each filled with over 100 containers containing organs. The organs were stored in formaldehyde and methyl alcohol, and some containers had cracked, leaking their contents.
The police began looking into the previous owner, Michael Berkland. They discovered that Berkland had been employed at a medical examiner's office but was terminated for failing to complete autopsy reports, and his medical examiner's license was revoked.
The organs were remnants from various autopsies that Berkland had carried out at funeral homes. While it is customary for doctors to keep tissue samples for up to a year for further testing, there is no legitimate reason to retain entire organs. Berkland was arrested and faced charges for improper storage of hazardous waste and driving with a suspended license.
3. James Bond’s Legendary Car
In 1989, a contractor from Long Island paid $100 for a storage unit. The following day, he and his brother began rummaging through the contents. As they lifted some blankets, they uncovered a peculiar car with fins in place of wheels. Neither of them had any clue what they had just found.
They loaded the mysterious car onto a truck. Excited truck drivers reached out over their CB radios, asking if the car was the original one from the James Bond movie, *The Spy Who Loved Me*. The brothers were unaware, as they had never seen any James Bond films.
Upon returning home, the contractor rented the movie and soon realized the immense value of his discovery. He had unknowingly purchased the Lotus Esprit used in the film’s iconic underwater scene.
The contractor had the car authenticated, restored, and repaired. He then decided to auction it off. He learned that the car had cost more than $100,000 to create back then, which would be nearly $500,000 today, and hoped to sell it for a similar amount.
The car was eventually sold for £616,000 ($997,000). Billionaire Elon Musk won the auction, expressing plans to create a fully functional version of the car.
2. ID Theft Operation
In Denver, Brandon Michael purchased a storage unit hoping to find items to resell. Instead, he came across boxes and bags stuffed with hundreds of passports, Social Security cards, and medical records. As he continued digging, he uncovered drug paraphernalia, pills, and the printer used to create fake documents.
Concerned about the drugs and documents in his possession, Michael took everything to the police. The authorities advised him to dispose of the items, but instead, Michael decided to bring them to a local news station.
The news station uncovered that the stolen data had been taken from a nearby hospital, prompting them to notify the facility. The hospital traced the theft back to a former employee, Dawn Philbin, who had recently been let go.
Philbin had been collaborating with Paul Simmons, the owner of the storage unit, who was a skilled identity thief. Simmons was meticulous in ensuring that those he worked with had clean backgrounds, good credit, and no criminal history. His goal was to maximize profits from the fake IDs.
As the police launched their investigation, both Philbin and Simmons were taken into custody. Philbin admitted to stealing 20 patient records a week for over a year and a half. She received a four-year prison sentence, while Simmons was sentenced to six years for his role in producing the counterfeit IDs.
1. Infant Remains
Andrea Giesbrecht stopped making payments on her storage unit in Winnipeg, leading it to be auctioned off. Before it was sold, storage workers peered inside and were immediately struck by a foul odor. Upon inspecting a few trash bags, they discovered the decomposing bodies of newborns. The workers alerted the authorities, who launched a search of the unit and uncovered the remains of six infants.
Despite using a false address and her maiden name when renting the storage unit, Giesbrecht was traced back to the locker. She was arrested after police obtained her DNA from a used sanitary napkin found in her home’s trash. The deceased children were confirmed to be hers.
In court, Giesbrecht’s defense claimed that the children had been stillborn, but three state experts disproved this theory, stating the likelihood of it was 1 in 500 trillion. While the exact cause of death could not be determined due to the extreme decay of the bodies, it was believed that the infants were likely born alive.
The court found Giesbrecht guilty, as it was revealed that she had concealed the pregnancies from everyone, including her husband. The court concluded that she intentionally sought to hide the existence of her children. She was convicted of six counts of concealing a child’s body.
