The Corpse Behind The Cooler
Didn’t anyone smell anything?
As a writer of mysteries, and someone who wonders about strange things in general, I’ve often taken note of odd places that might be good places to hide bodies. In years past, I worked in a convenience store, and I have to admit, never once did I ever look at the space between a cooler and a wall and think of hiding a body there.
In 2019, when workers moved some coolers away from the wall of a defunct No Frills Supermarket location in Council Bluffs, Iowa, they found the body of Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada. The 25-year-old, who had worked at the supermarket, had gone missing nearly 10 years earlier. It was suspected that he had climbed atop the coolers — a concealed storage space frequented by workers during unsanctioned breaks — and fallen into the 18-inch space between the coolers and the wall. Murillo-Moncada hadn’t been scheduled for a shift at the time, so the other employees may not have known that he entered the store at all, and authorities believed the loud noise of the coolers blocked out any shouts for help.
I’ll admit, I’ll never look at the coolers in my grocery store in quite the same way ever again.
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