Family of Pia Farrenkopf - 'Mummified in Michigan' - Plan Memorial

Pia Farrenkopf likely died in 2009, the last time a call was made from her cell phone, but her body wasn’t discovered until 2014. (Photo via Mummified in Michigan Facebook page)

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The life of a Michigan woman whose mummified remains were discovered last year in a suburban Detroit garage – sparking an international mystery about how she could have been dead for five years without anyone noticing – will be celebrated in Massachusetts at a date to be announced.

A memorial service and Catholic Mass for Pia Farrenkopf had been planned for last Saturday at Cathedral of the Holy Cross Church in Boston, but was cancelled because of bad weather, MLive.com reports. A new date hasn’t been set, a church spokesman said.

Tuesday would have been Farrenkopf’s 50th birthday.

For days on end last winter and spring, Farrenkopf was known simply as “mummified woman” until her family adopted – for lack of some better phrase – “Mummified in Michigan” in a Facebook page to give her a human face.

“I do not like the name but I wanted the connection to be made with the story and this page,” wrote Farrenkopf’s niece, Nina Logan, who used the Facebook page to vent her frustration at an international media firestorm that suggested that no one cared enough to look for her aunt.

“I wanted to draw those of you who were reading the story to this page so I could explain to you who Pia Davida Farrenkopf was,” Logan wrote on the facebook page. “She wasn’t a nobody,” Logan said.“She had a lot of friends. She had a lot of co-workers.”

Farrenkopf lived quietly, alone save the company of a poodle named “Baby” and a cat named “Bungee,” whose whereabouts are as mysterious as the cause of their owner’s death. Oakland County sheriff’s officials said there were no signs of the animals at the house in Pontiac where Farrenkopf had lived.

Related:

• Contractor Makes Gruesome Discovery In Foreclosed Home
• How Disappearance of Mummified Woman Went Unnoticed
• Family of Mummified Woman ‘Devastated’ by Reports No One Cared
• New Mystery in Mummified Woman Thought Dead Since 2008: Did She Vote on 2010?
• DNA Likely to ID ‘Mummified in Michigan,’ But How She Died May Remain a Mystery
• Mummified Body Positively ID’d as that of Pia Farrenkopf

Her mortgage payments and other living expenses were automatically deducted from her bank account, and so it wasn’t until the loan was in arrears and foreclosure was underway that her body was discovered.

DNA finally established Farrenkopf’s identity, but how she died – natural causes, suicide or homicide – may never be known. Officials said at the time there wasn’t enough tissue remaining on the badly decomposed body to perform a thorough autopsy to determine the cause of death.

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