Brooklyn Hoarder May Have Lived With Son's Corpse for 20 Years

MIDWOOD, BROOKLYN — Terry the Dead Cat Lady of the hit AETV series "Hoarders" has nothing on Midwood resident Rita Wolfensohn, who, according to the New York Post, was as shocked as anyone to discover earlier this month that her son Louis, whom she believed had left Brooklyn and cut off contact some 20 years ago, had in fact been dead and decaying amid the clutter on the second floor of her home — his skeleton completely intact and "dressed in jeans, socks and a shirt, lying on its back on a thin mattress on the floor."

The elderly woman's sister-in-law reportedly found the skeletal remains while attempting to navigate the clutter.

The New York City Police Department (NYPD) confirmed to Patch that cops were called to the small brick home at 2111 Avenue N, between East 21st and East 22nd streets, around 1:30 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 15, to investigate a report of an "unconscious male."

And indeed, "upon arrival, officers discovered a unidentified male unconscious and unresponsive," the department said in a statement. (Which has to be the understatement of the century.)

Two weeks later, staffers at the NYC Office of the Chief Medical Examiner were still struggling to identify the person found in Wolfensohn's second-floor bedroom and determine how he or she died, a spokesman for the office told Patch.

The spokesman declined to comment on the exact state of the body, but said that "skeletonized remains isn't far off the mark" — and noted that in general, the longer it takes to identify someone, the longer they may have been dead.

NYPD detectives have not opened a homicide investigation.

That may be because, according to the Post, "investigators now believe Wolfensohn may not have known she was living with the corpse of her son. Cobwebs and garbage filled the room where the body was found — as if 'a garbage truck had dumped its load' inside, police sources said."

When police questioned Wolfensohn, who is legally blind, "she spoke about her son as if he had simply moved out," the Post reported.

Louis Wolfensohn would reportedly be 49 years old if he were alive today.

"We are still investigating," the medical examiner's spokesman told Patch. "We'll need additional testing to determine the cause and manner of death."