Wife explains how she failed to find her 'missing' husband's body in their home for months

A heartbroken wife has opened up about how her husband’s dead body lay in their home for months without anybody finding it.

Jennifer Maedge, 50, reported her husband Richard Maedge missing after he texted her in April 2022, saying he felt unwell so was leaving work early.

When she got home to their two-storey house in Troy, Illinois, Jennifer found Richard’s car in the driveway and yet there was no sign of the man himself.

Police eventually searched the house but also concluded that he wasn’t at the property.

It turns out, this was not the case, and his lifeless body was, in fact, lying in a hidden cupboard under the stairs.

Speaking to People back in 2023, Jennifer said it wasn’t until she was looking for Christmas decorations, eight months after Richard vanished, that she chanced upon his remains.

She explained that she was rifling through “a sort of closet-within-a-closet” beneath the stairs when she shone a flashlight on what police later identified as her husband’s mummified remains.

Richard, who was 53 at the time, had died by suicide, Jennifer confirmed. And there was no sign of foul play.

The couple lived on Hickory Street, Troy – a quiet residential area(Google Streetview)

Yet, questions were, naturally, asked about how his corpse could have remained undiscovered in the house for such a long time, particularly since authorities conducted three separate searches of the property accompanied by cadaver dogs.

During their first visit to the house, the day after Richard went missing, officers noticed a "sewer-like odour" indoors but could not locate its source, Chief Deputy Coroner Kelly Rogers later told KTVI. She added that the smell was still lingering during their second visit.

Rogers suggested that the most significant barrier to Richard’s discovery was the state of the property, which they described as a “hoarder home.”

Jennifer contested this description, noting that “hoarder is a strong word.” However, in her interview with People she conceded that her husband “didn’t want to get rid of anything.”

The 50-year-old also explained how, over the eight months following Richard’s disappearance, she scoured his notebooks and journals for any clues as to where he’d gone.

During this time, the unpleasant smell persisted, and so she called in a plumber. They, too, agreed there was a whiff of “ammonia” about the place but, just like the police before them, failed to identify where it was coming from.

"The smell did not take up the whole entire house, it was very, very confusing and everything, because there's not a basement or anything, it's more of a crawl space and a cellar," Jennifer said.

"Plus, I have four dogs and a cat roaming around, so you get many different smells. And then also, my sinuses were bothering me at the time, too. So, you're trying to figure things out and you're getting confused at where it's [coming from]."

She also noted that the cupboard where Richard's body was found had originally been accessible by a hallway door. However, after the couple remodelled the house, it could only be entered via a door hidden inside a larger outer closet.

"It was a concealed room, so more than likely that took up a majority of the smell in there," Jennifer noted.

Understandably, other members of Richard’s family are demanding answers as to how police failed to uncover his body, instead leaving the task – and the shock – to his poor wife.

"Mistakes were made, and I want answers," Richard's sister, Marilyn Toliver, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatchfollowing the shocking discovery.

"I'm not going away. I'm just now beginning to say stuff out loud. I should have been screaming from the beginning, but I was suckered in by the police department saying they were doing their job and looking for him."

Nevertheless, following an autopsy, a deputy coroner told KTVI that because the remains when found were in a mummified state, they might not have produced a strong, persistent smell.

This, they said, may explain why everyone failed to find the source of the odour.

Police searched "the grounds, the backyard, the main floor, the upstairs," Jennifer recalled, admitting that she doesn’t remember telling them about the interior closet.

"I didn't ever really think of it, because I never thought that he was there," she said, adding: "It never occurred to me that he would've taken his own life.”

If you are based in the USA, and you or someone you know needs mental health assistance right now, call or text 988 or visit 988lifeline.org to access online chat from the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. This is a free, confidential crisis hotline that is available to everyone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you are in another country, you can go to www.befrienders.org to find a helpline near you. In the UK, people having mental health crises can contact the Samaritans at 116 123 or jo@samaritans.org