Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada, who was 25 years old at the time, went missing in Council Bluffs, Iowa in November 2009. His parents reported him missing after noticing that he had become disoriented and was hearing voices. To help him cope with his mental health, doctors had prescribed him anti-depressants. Initially, his parents thought he had run away from home due to emotional distress, leading search efforts to expand beyond their immediate surroundings.
Maria Stockton, a translator for his mother, explained that he was hearing voices telling him to eat sugar. He believed that his heart was beating too hard and thought that consuming sugar would help alleviate the intensity of his heartbeat.
It took authorities a decade to finally uncover any trace of Murillo-Moncada in January.
Murillo-Moncada had worked at the former No Frills store before going missing, and investigators told CNN that they had found his body there in 2019. Workers spotted the image while removing shelves and coolers from the building after the store closed in 2016. Council Bluffs Police Captain Todd Weddum discovered Murillo-Moncada’s body in an 18-inch crevice between a cooler and a wall.
Previous employees told the Omaha World-Herald that workers frequently climbed on top of the cooler, which they used to store items, after police identified the body. Workers would also hide in the gap to take unofficial breaks.
Weddum reported that the body showed no signs of trauma, leading to the declaration of the death as accidental. They suspect Murillo-Moncada fell into the tight compartment and was unable to escape, with the loud sounds of the cooler’s compressors drowning out any attempts to shout for aid.
That would imply that Murillo-Moncada’s body could have been in the store for seven years while it was still open.
Police used his parents’ DNA to authenticate his identification, and his clothing matched what he was wearing when he went missing.