The curious case of a young man who vanished without a trace for 10 years– and then…
Larry’s mother knew that there was something wrong with her son when he started to complain of chest pains and the need to eat sugar to alleviate the discomfort. The fact that he was also having hallucinations didn’t bode well for his state of mind.
It was on Thanksgiving Day in 2009 when the latest argument between Larry and his parents erupted. It ended as it usually did, with Larry stomping out of the house in a rage and then returning a few hours later when he had calmed down, and the whispering voices in his mind had faded away.
This particular Thanksgiving Day was going to end a little differently.
For starters, Larry left without his car, without his keys for the house, without his jacket, and, considering that there was a blizzard raging outside, without his shoes.
Still, his parents weren’t worried. He normally headed over to the No Frills Supermarket where he worked when this happened, stayed there for a few hours then came back all calmed down.
This particular Thanksgiving Day he didn’t come back.
Larry was reported missing the very next day and Iowan police Sgt Brandon Danielson was placed in charge of locating the missing 25-year-old. He interviewed family, friends, and even workmates at the No Frills Supermarket.
No one had spoken to, seen, nor heard from Larry since he had wandered off into the snowstorm. And no one was going to see him again for the next 10 years.
Sgt Danielson continued the search until the case petered out, no clues whatsoever surfaced over the years and the case went as cold as the night Larry had disappeared.
At the No Frills Supermarket business went on as usual but in 2016 the store closed down.
It was in January 2019 that the grisly discovery was going to be made when some workmen were dismantling shelves in the now abandoned store.
Behind the cooler, a badly decomposed body was found by the workmen. But the body had been there so long and was so badly decomposed that immediate identification was impossible.
It took months until the identification was made and in the meantime, the police questioned former supermarket employees just in case murder had been committed.
In July the body was identified as Larry’s.
Apparently, after his argument with his parents in 2009, he had automatically trundled the short distance to his safe place, to work. There he had climbed on top of the 12-foot cooler as he was wont to do and promptly fell behind it. He became wedged in the narrow 18-inch gap at an awkward angle, arms and legs trapped, unable to move, barely able to breathe in the tight space.
There he stayed, crying out feebly, waiting, waiting, and waiting to be rescued, his weakening cries for help going unheard due to the ambient noise. Every day, shoppers, workers, and possibly even his own parents, undertook their grocery shopping in that corner of the store as poor Larry lay lodged between a hard wall and an immovable object.
No one will ever know when the voices in his head stopped along with his breathing.
Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada died bizarrely in a busy shopping store, alone, surrounded by hundreds of people.
He could have easily lain in his final resting place forever if not for an accidental discovery 10 years after leaving his home alone. At the time he had been angry after the argument, barefoot in his haste to leave the house, and accompanied only by the whispering voices in his head.
The raging snowstorm had hounded and tormented him all the way to the No Frills Supermarket where the voices in his head were finally going to be stilled, where he was destined to spend his last and final Thanksgiving Day.