Autopsy offers clues on remains found inside Heights home
The discovery of skeletal remains in the wall of a Heights bungalow in March shocked many — especially those who had worried about the fate of the home’s missing owner. They patiently awaited information, not knowing how to explain it.
Now, months later, an autopsy report is offering new clues. Remains from the wall are “consistent” with a description of 61-year-old Mary Cerruti, who lived there before disappearing in early 2015, the report found. A leg bone appeared to have been healing from a break.
The jumble was spotted by a tenant because of a hole in the attic floor.
Many have puzzled over what could have happened to Cerruti. The discovery of bones brought new attention to her case, captivating and disturbing even those who did not know her.
Could a woman possibly fall into a space between walls? Could that happen without anyone knowing?
The autopsy results, released Wednesday, struck some as not fully resolving all aspects of the case.
Cerruti’s cousin, Nancy Stewart Stoddard, said she knew that the mystery would take time to solve. But she didn’t feel yet that she understood what had
happened to the family member with whom she had largely lost touch.
“So far it doesn’t compute,” Stoddard said.
Cerruti lived in her home at 610 Allston for more than a decade. She kept largely to herself, neighbors said. She decorated the small, yellow house eclectically. Married and divorced three times, she lived at one time with eight cats.
In more recent years, neighbors joined with her to fight plans for a proposed massive apartment complex on the gentrifying street. They lost. The building went up all around her. Cerruti documented the construction with photographs, scrawling notes on the back of each about her frustration with it.
Unanswered questions
Neighbors tried still to check on Cerruti. They noticed as her landscaping grew wild, mail piled up and a window broke. Several told police of their concern for her in 2015. Cerruti could not be found.
Two years passed. No answers surfaced. Cerruti’s house sold at a foreclosure auction, then a new tenant moving in discovered the remains. Were they hers?
The bones don’t tell a complete story, much as those who knew Cerruti wish they would.
Rodents chewed most of the remains recovered from inside the wall of Cerruti’s former home. The investigator found nearly 20 percent of the skeleton missing, including many bones in the hands and feet, five ribs and eight vertebrae.
A body can decompose in a matter of weeks, said Daniel Wescott, director of the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State University, speaking generally. Bacteria builds up, attracting insects, making it “completely possible to have a skeleton in two years,” he said.
The Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences conducted the autopsy of the remains.
Information still could be gleaned. Enough remained to indicate to a medical examiner that the body possibly belonged to a female adult of white ancestry over the age of 40 — such as the missing Cerruti. The teeth bore evidence of extensive prior dental work. DNA identification was pending, but nothing indicated the bones were not hers.
An investigator instead described them as “tentatively identified.”
Broken floorboard
Officials also found among the remains a pair of athletic shoes, eyeglasses and torn red and black material, which may have been clothing.
How Cerruti died, if the bones were indeed hers, remains a mystery.
Summary results of the autopsy, published earlier in June, stated that the cause and manner of death could not be determined.
The tenant who found the bones used a fold-down ladder to access the attic, according to investigator’s notes. He noticed a broken floorboard. What seemed to be a piece of the floorboard was found among the remains below.
The wall space measured about two feet wide between the sheetrock, according to the report. From the broken attic board to
the floor of the wall space measured about 8 feet, 10 inches.
The space was located along a Jack-and-Jill bathroom, opposite the sink.
No acute trauma could be distinguished among the remains.
As it stands, the Houston Police Department has seen no sign of foul play, spokesman John Cannon said.
“Investigators believe it’s likely going to fall under the categories of either a natural or accidental death,” Cannon said. “That’s what they believe at this time, unless other information comes to light.”
But not all trauma breaks a bone, noted Wescott, the anthropologist.
‘She was vulnerable’
The medical examiner found the most telling detail, perhaps, in the left femur: It had been fractured some time before death.
A fracture as described in the report would likely have healed beyond the need for a cast but still could have ached, said
Francis Gannon, a Baylor College of Medicine pathologist.
“Having that fracture could have contributed to her not recovering her balance,” Gannon said. “In my mind, she fell and died in that location.”
Questions remain unanswered, though.
Chrissie Ramirez, of the Heights shop Casa Ramirez, where Cerruti occasionally worked, said she did not recall Cerruti ever using crutches or a cane.
Neighbor Roxanne Davis further wondered what Cerruti would have been doing in the attic at all. As it was, she seemed small, frail and in poor health in the years before she disappeared.
“I hope they’ll drill down a little farther into the testing of what remains there are,” Davis said. “Mary lived on her own. She was vulnerable.”
Davis had been in her own home’s attic when she answered the phone to talk.