Police: Skeletal remains were in home for ‘years’
Unidentified bones likely in home with occupant, officials say.
Human remains KETTERING — found inside a Kettering house had been there for years, even as someone occupied the home, police said Wednesday about a case that has left investigators confused and neighbors stunned.
A relative of one of the occupants of the home reportedly found the skeletal remains May 31 inside the house on the 3000 block of Pren- tice Drive and called 911 to report it.
“Obviously, the person had been deceased for some period of time. We believe there was a person, an occupant in the house, while the person was deceased,” Kettering Police Capt. Daniel Gangwer said Wednesday.
The Montgomery County Coroner’s Office is still trying to determine the identification of the deceased, but the remains had been there for “years,” Coroner Kent Harshbarger said. He said there did not appear to be any skeletal trauma to the remains.
“Right now, we don’t have any
information at this point that would select foul play,” Gangwer said. “I would say that this case is out of the normal.”
Records from the Montgomery County Auditor’s Office show that the property is owned by Denny P. Barry, who purchased it in 1994.
The 911 call made by an out-of-state woman, Danielle Barry, who said she was the daughter of Barry gave a dispatcher a chilling account of what she found when arriv- ing to check on her father.
“My 83-year-old father is extremely sick and is needing to go to the hospital,” Danielle Barry told a dispatcher, saying the doors were locked. “He’s not OK. We opened up a window in the back of his house, and my husband says that he saw what might have been a skeleton in that room.”
The caller said she and her father had not been close, but “I am trying to figure out what is going on.”
Danielle Barry said that her husband, Stefan Renton, entered the house through a window to check on her father. Renton found the skeletal remains piled in a blanket in the rear bedroom of the house.
Neighbors say that Denny Barry was reclusive, and they didn’t know much about him.
Doreen Johnson said Denny Barry “kept to himself.”
“I live three doors down and haven’t seen him for years,” Johnson said. “This whole thing is so strange to be happening in the Kettering suburbs. We all just wonder how long that body has been dead in that house?”
Gangwer said police don’t know for certain if the remains are male or female.
“We are trying to get as much information as we can, and the investigation is in its infancy stages,” he said.
The coroner’s office is using a scientific identification process to help determine the identity, the coroner’s office said.
There has been no official cause or manner of death determined in the case.