Have I Mentioned Lately That My Place of Employment Is Cursed?
 

I've spoken before of things that have happened at my rather small hospital (73 beds, a bit over 200 employees).

They include an assortment of stress related breakdowns, deaths from obscure cancers, deaths by alcoholism, suicides, and the murder of a coworker a few years ago in which his girlfriend kept him in the basement wrapped in plastic for a couple months ... she probably would have gotten away with it if it hadn't been a hot summer, because the police didn't search the basement really well.

Anyway ...

Folks in the Philadelphia area here have probably seen the news reports about the murder at the Motel 6 in King of Prussia?

Local Paper

Radio

Inquirer

The victim was the daughter of a coworker on my shift (not my dept)

That is very sad. My comment about you knowing the most interesting (cursed?) people stands.

Uhg. How awful. Keep us updated ok?

God, that's awful, Wolf. My deepest sympathies to your co-worker. The impact on everyone where you work must be very unsettling, to say the least. :(

Wow, scary... my employer has been plagued by a large rash of deaths of family of employees too. Everything from cancer to the death of a faculty member's 3 yo son who was playing in the back yard of their on-campus house.

That's messed up. I read that headline this morning, saw it was someone from E. Norriton and I was almost scared to read the rest of the story in case it was someone I knew.

What the hell is wrong with people?
 

"Although First Assistant District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman would not confirm the identity of the victim until the next-of-kin had been notified Wednesday, sources... ...said the victim is Anna Nicole Fowler, a 19-year-old East Norriton resident."

Emphasis added.

The interview with the ADA occured yesterday early afternoon (probably in time for the noon news, which is when I first saw the story), at which time the victim had not been identified.

In this instance, at least, there was no surprise provided by the newspaper.

The media sucks about a lot of stuff, but death notifications they are pretty good about.

There was an instance recently, though, where the media got info out before the notifications occured. I think it was related to that Phila woman who got swept into the storm drain at the bus stop? One of the channels provided details about a tattoo on the corpse that identified her to her family prior to the police notification occurring.

Some of the training I've had on Line of Duty Death covers the dreaded "notification" topic ... what to do, what not to, and how to avoid info going out through the media before the family are notified. It's pretty intense stuff.

Just shortly after my parents were married, a news radio program announced mid-morning that they'd recovered the mangled body of so-and-so (my dad) who had died in a violent car wreck or something. She heard it on a coworker's radio at work. She went home for the day, called all the relatives, made funeral arrangements, and was headed down to the morgue to pick up the body when my dad walked in the door. It had been some other guy by the same name, apparently (and he doesn't have a terribly common name.)

What I wouldn't give to have seen the look on her face right then...

I once saw a horrible head-on smash between a car and a truck on the windy road between Vancouver and Whistler. I talked to the (very mangled) car driver for an hour while they cut the car into three pieces to free him and his passenger. I heard later on that as a result of some mix up his mother was informed by the police that he had died in the crash, even though he actually survived. To make matters worse, the exact same thing had happened six months earlier: she'd been told he was dead when he wasn't. The poor woman must be paranoid now!

It reminds me of the remake of 'The House on Haunted Hill' which takes place in an abandoned insane asylum. Lessons learned from movies like that include the idea that if blood starts dripping from the walls it's probably time to leave.

Seriously though, I'm sorry to hear about the string of incidents. I do have one question, the coworker whose girlfriend murdered him and kept his body in the basement, was he a trained psychiatric professional?

Yes, he was.

But untrained nut shooting sleeping trained psychiatric professional in the face beats the training every single time. The girlfriend had a prior psychiatric history. This is shown to be not just history by the fact that she continued to live with their 2 year old child in the house permeated with eau d'deadguy for several months after the killing. She had made some unsuccessful attempts to camoflage the smell. The neighbors had been noticing. The police had not.

The first night that Sam (a very responsible guy) failed to show up for work I was announcing ... he's dead. in the basement. wrapped in plastic.

Which is, in fact, where he was found a couple months later.

I'm sure I wrote about this at the time of the event.

Well Wolf, the rest of us appreciate your efforts. Keep wrangling all that negative energy into one building.

We do tend to deal with it and move on.

Anything for the safety of the delicate fabric of the universe.

Happened again. The body found in the motel room was that of a son of a coworker.

The "other hotel room killing" mentioned at the end of this article was the one that started this thread ... the daughter of a coworker.