The classic urban legend plays on a universal skin-crawling fear: a weary traveler checks into a cheap motel room, settles into bed for the night, and is plagued by a suffocating, sickly sweet stench. No amount of blasted air conditioning or heavy perfume can mask the rot hanging in the air. After spending hours tossing and turning in the dark, breathing in the invisible haze, maintenance is finally called to strip the bed, only to reveal a decomposing human corpse stuffed inside the frame directly beneath where the guest was sleeping.
Urban legends sometimes become who came first style reality. Perhaps copycats?
On Wednesday, June 9, 1999, that exact nightmare materialized inside Room 112 of the Burgundy Motor Inn in Atlantic City
A vacationing couple checked into the $36 night motel room and immediately noticed a heavy, putrid odor clinging to the humid air near the headboard.
Assuming it was simply stagnant plumbing or damp carpets, they unpacked their bags, turned off the lights, and sank into the mattress.
Throughout the long, muggy night, they lay oblivious in the dark, their chest rising and falling. Attempting to enjoy their slumber.
What they didn't know is they were just inches above a rotting human body, as bodily fluids steadily pooled into the hollow base beneath them.
By the following morning, the suffocating stench had transformed into an unbearable hazard, forcing the couple to pack up in a wave of sudden nausea and demand an immediate room change.
When housekeepers stepped inside to investigate, they stripped away the stained linens and lifted the heavy mattress off the box spring frame.
Peering down into the hollow wooden base through the narrow slatted frame, they gasped in horror: jammed tightly inside the dark, unventilated box was the bloated, purplish corpse of 64 year old Saul Hernandez.
Forensic examiners later revealed the horrifying timeline of the crime. Hernandez had been brutally stabbed multiple times during a violent altercation inside the room days earlier.
The killer had squeezed his limp, bleeding body into the bed frame's internal cavity, slapped the mattress back on top, and fled into the night.
For days, the motel had routinely rented out Room 112 to unsuspecting travelers who slept, rested, and dreamed directly atop the hidden, decaying crime scene, breathing in the volatile gases of human decomposition all night long.
Here’s the thing, One true occurrence means nothing right?
**keep Reading
On 10 July 2003, a man checked into the Capri Motel, just east of downtown Kansas City, and began complaining about a foul odor in his room. Management told him nothing could be done about the problem, and he spent three nights in his room before checking out because he could no longer stand the smell. When the cleaning staff came in to make up the room on 13 July, they lifted the mattress and underneath found a man's body in an advanced stage of decomposition.
July 1996 a woman's body was found under a mattress in the Colorado Boulevard Travelodge in Pasadena, CA. Apparently the motel's staff discovered her ten days after her demise
August 1994 in Fort Lauderdale, hotel staff discovered the body of 47-year-old Bryan Gregory tucked under a platform bed.
March 1994 the body of 24-year-old Josefina Martinez was found underneath a bed at the Traveler's Hotel near Miami International Airport.
Virginia in 1989, Jerry Lee Dunbar disposed of the remains of two victims this way: 27-year-old Deirdre Smith, who was discovered in May under the floor of a motel room on Route 1, and 29-year-old Marilyn Graham, who turned up in June under a bed in the Alexandria Econo Lodge.
New York, motel in 1988, a body turned up in a box spring. The remains of 29-year-old Mary Jean DeOliviera were found at the Oceanside Motel.
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