MARY REESER:

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A Case Study in
Spontaneous Human Combustion

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Author Unknown

The 1951 death of Mrs. Mary Reeser of St. Petersburg, FL, who was found reduced to ashes in a practically undamaged apartment, was a landmark case of spontaneous human combustion because it was the first instance where every possible tool of modern scientific investigation was used to determine the cause of this mysterious phenomenon. Yet despite the efforts of the FBI, fire officials, arson experts, and pathologists, a year after the incident Detective Cass Burgess of the St. Petersburg police commented as follows:

And Dr. Wilton M. Krogman, a physical anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Medicine and a world-renowned expert on the effects of fire on the human body, finally gave up trying to figure out what happened. Dr. Krogman said:

Here are the details of the case:

Mrs. Mary Hardy Reeser, an agreeable, motherly widow of 67, was living in St. Petersburg, Florida, to be near her son, Dr. Richard Reeser. On the evening of July 1, 1951, she had remained in her son's home with one of her grandchildren while the rest of the family went to the beach. When they returned, they found that Mrs. Reeser had already left for her own apartment. The younger Mrs. Reeser drove to her mother-in-law's to see if everything was all right. According to her testimony, there was nothing in Mrs. Reeser's appearance or demeanor to cause any alarm. Dr. Reeser visited his mother later that evening. She was mildly depressed over the fact that she had not heard from two friends who were supposed to rent an apartment for her in anticipation of a return trip to Columbia, PA, formerly her hometown. His mother told him that she wished to retire early and would take two sleeping pills to ensure a good night's rest. Dr. Reeser left at about 8:30 PM and returned to his home.

The last person to see Mrs. Reeser alive was her landlady, Mrs. Pansy M. Carpenter, who lived in another apartment in the four-unit building (the two units between them were unoccupied). Mrs. Carpenter saw Mrs. Reeser briefly at about 9 PM. She was wearing her nightgown, a housecoat, and black satin slippers and was lounging in a comfortable chair smoking a cigarette. The bed covers had been turned back. Mrs. Reeser's last night was a typical summer night in Florida: the sky was overcast with occasional flashes of heat lightning in the distance.

When Mrs. Carpenter woke up Monday morning at 5AM, she noticed a slight odor of smoke but was not alarmed, since she attributed the smell to a water pump in the garage that had been overheating lately. She got up, turned off the pump, and settled back into bed. When she got up an hour later to collect her newspaper outside, she no longer smelled any smoke.

At 8AM a telegram arrived for Mrs. Reeser. Mrs. Carpenter signed the receipt and went to her tenant's apartment to bring her the telegram. The doorknob, when she placed her hand on it, was hot. Alarmed, she stepped back and shouted for help. Two painters working across the street ran over. One of them opened the door; as he entered, he felt a blast of hot air. Thinking of rescuing Mrs. Reeser, he frantically looked around but saw no signs of her. The bed was empty. There was some smoke, but the only fire was a small flame on a wooden beam, over a partition separating the living room and kitchenette.

The firemen arrived, put out the small flame with a hand pump. and tore away part of the partition. When Assistant Fire Chief S. O. Griffith began his inspection of the premises, he could not believe his eyes. In the middle of the floor there was a charred area roughly four feet in diameter, inside of which he found a number of blackened chair springs and the ghastly remains of a human body, consisting of a charred liver attached to a piece of the spine, a shrunken skull, one foot still wearing a black satin slipper, and a small pile of ashes.

Coroner Edward T. Silk arrived to examine the body and survey the apartment. Although deeply puzzled, he decided the death was accidental and authorized the removal of the remains. The scooped-up ashes, the tiny shrunken head, and the slipper-encased foot were taken by ambulance to a local hospital.

The ensuing investigation included police and fire officials as well as arson experts. The facts that confronted them seemed inexplicable considering the great heat necessary to account for Mrs. Reeser's incinerated body. Little of the furniture, other than the chair and the end table next to it, was badly damaged, but the apartment had suffered some peculiar effects. The ceiling, draperies and walls, from apoint exactly four feet above the floor, were coated with a smelly, oily soot. Below this four foot mark there was none. The wall paint adjacent to the chair was faintly browned, but the carpet where the chair had rested was not even burned through. A wall mirror 10 feet away had cracked, probably from heat. On a dressing table 12 feet away, two pink wax candles had puddled, but their wicks lay undamaged in their holders. Plastic wall outlets above the four foot mark were melted, but the fuses were not blown and the current was on. The baseboard electrical outlets were undamaged. An electric clock plugged into one of the outlets had stopped at precisely 4:20, but the same clock ran perfectly when plugged into one of the baseboard outlets.

Newspapers nearby on a table and draperies and linens on the daybed close at hand - all flammable - were not damaged. And though the painters and Mrs. Carpenter had felt a wave of heat when they opened the door, no one had noted smoke or burning odor and there were no embers or flames in the ashes.

Faced with such a mystery, the St. Petersburg authorities called in the FBI. Laboratory findings showed that Mrs. Reeser's estimated weight of 175 lbs. had been reduced to a total of less than 10 lbs., including the foot and shrunken head. The final report concluded that no known chemical agents or other accelerants had been involved in starting the fire.

Dr. Krogman has burned cadavers with gasoline, oil, wood, and all kinds of other agents. He has experimented with bones encases in flesh or stripped, both moist and dry. His tests have utilized combustion apparatus ranging from outdoor pyres to the most modern pressurized crematorium equipment. He has demonstrated conclusively that it takes extraordinary heat to consume a body, and that only at over 3000 degrees Fahrenheit would bone become volatile enough to lose its shape and leave only ashes. "These are very great heats," he said, "that would sear, char, scorch or otherwise mar or effect anything andeverything within a considerable radius."

Another mystery was the slippered left foot, which Mrs. Reeser, having been in some discomfort, was in the habit of propping up on a stool. The foot was left unburned, apparently because it was outside the mysterious four-foot radius of incineration.

Perhaps strangest of all, and unique to this case of SHC, was the shrunken skull. Dr. Krogman commented: