Gruesome find raises many questions

West Allis - Year after year, in the quiet upstairs of an empty house only a half block from noisy National Avenue, the body of a man slowly became a skeleton.

West Allis police now know that David Carter was alive in November 2007 because they found a check he had written. Between then and last month, many people stopped by his home in the 1300 block of South 58th Street, though no one ever went inside.

And no one imagined that the family home on a block of tidy homes held such a silent secret.

The unknown came to light Jan. 23 when Milwaukee County employees entered the house with the help of a locksmith after the county had taken title to it Dec. 21 for back taxes. There, at the top of the stairs, they found the skeletal remains of Carter, who would have been 45 years old on that date.

The Medical Examiner's Office has ruled his death a suicide, with a single gunshot wound to his head. A handgun was found at the scene. West Allis police think his death occurred in late 2007.

But a person to remain undetected so long after death raises all kinds of questions about how this could happen. The short answer is that it took a perfect set of circumstances.

Why didn't anyone report him missing?

Regardless of any eventual legal or financial entanglement, one reality that is hard to fathom was why Carter wasn't missed after a relatively short period of time. There was a good reason.

It was because he had told everyone that he was moving to New Mexico, Deputy Police Chief Charles Padgett said, as he explained details of the police investigation that concluded last week.

Carter had resigned from his job with the city of Milwaukee Department of Neighborhood Services, Padgett said, and apparently had a job lined up in New Mexico.

When Carter disappeared, everyone thought he had gone south.

Fernando (whose first name is only being used for this article), a young man who lives with his mother in the house beside Carter's corner house, rarely saw his neighbor before November 2007.

Fernando was only a child when his family moved in. but he said he remembers his neighbor as liking to grill out in the summer on the second floor rear deck. Otherwise, he was quiet and Fernando said he only saw Cartner a handful of times, usually going in and out of the house.

Wouldn't a decaying body be noticeable?

Some people might assume that as Carter's body decomposed naturally, the odor would have been obvious from outside the home shortly thereafter.

Not at all, said Fernando.

"That's the thing that surprised me the most," he said.

Similarly, the West Allis police officers who investigated the death didn't report the odor of decay, either, Padgett said. Of course, that was years after the fact.

Didn't the mail pile up?

An overflowing mailbox wouldn't have been another sign of something amiss. But the mailbox was almost always empty.

The main reason: Carter had diverted his mail to a relative in 2007, Padgett said, probably because he planned to move south.

"I've been on the route about five years and never delivered mail here," said West Allis mail carrier John Grochowski.

The only exception was a tax bill once a year. Property tax bills go to the residence unless the owner gives the city a different address to send it to, said Paul Ziehler, city administrator.

Who maintained the property?

It wouldn't have taken long for the outside of the house to look unkept, particularly in regulated issues such as shoveling the snow and mowing the lawn.

Well, the city took care of that for years and put the cost onto the home's property tax bill. Shovelers and mowers had no reason to think this was anything more than another abandoned house, Ziehler said.

"It doesn't necessarily trigger suspicion in our minds," Ziehler said.

What about the home's utilities?

For some time before Carter's death, nobody paid the utility bills, and when that happened, We Energies sued for $2,207 in small claims court and won.

When the heat was shut off, the pipes eventually froze.

At some point after November 2007, a neighbor reported to the city that water was coming out of the house, Padgett said. A water utility crew came and when no one came to the front door, they shut off the water from outside, Padgett said. Then they left a note for the owner to contact the city.

Last week, the county was still evaluating how bad the water damage is. But Padgett, who was inside the house as part of the police investigation, said the building seemed fairly sound except for water damage in the kitchen ceiling and a slight buckling in a first-floor room.

Didn't anyone notice unpaid taxes?

Of larger concern, from a government standpoint, would be property taxes - something that would get a government officials attention if the bills went unpaid for several years.

But the process involved in the collection of unpaid property tax bills doesn't immediately involve someone from the city knocking on someone's door. Instead, the unpaid bills go to the county, which provides the tax money the communities are entitled to and then tries to collect from the property owners.

Last year, West Allis sent a bill of $4,207 in unpaid property taxes and service charges to the county, according to the city treasurer's office. That includes $2,455 in property taxes, $652 for snow shoveling, $601 for weed control and mowing and $499 in unpaid water bills, all for 2011.

That was on top of a combined bill for the year before of $5,030; of $3,390 for 2009; and of $3,106 for 2008.

In fact, the county records show that taxes hadn't been paid since 2004. The amounts of unpaid taxes and fees were $3,170 for 2007, $2,421 for 2006 and $2,360 for 2005.

The grand total of unpaid property taxes and bills is $23,684.

That still didn't raise a red flag. People skipping out on their property taxes is hardly unique, these days. Right now, the Carter house is one of eight that the county has on its foreclosure list in West Allis alone.

Along the same vein, the house was already paid off, Padgett said, adding that Carter's mother had lived in the house before she died in 1997.

Eventually, though, it was the unpaid taxes that prompted an official visit that revealed the tragic reality inside the home.

What happens now?

Following the investigation, the Medical Examiners Office released Carter's remains to the Schmidt & Bartelt Funeral Home in Wauwatosa last week. However, no funeral is planned.

As for the damaged home, the county's plan is to repair it and list it with MLS like any other house being sold, said Milwaukee County Treasurer Daniel Diliberti.

That isn't as odd as one might think, Diliberti said. People die in houses all the time.

But one thing that this incident triggered is an effort by the treasurer's office to speed up the foreclosure process for abandoned homes to avoid damage such as happened to this house, Diliberti said. His office sent letters last week asking city officials all over the county to let the office know about any abandoned homes.