You know that “creepy house on the corner,” neighbors are asking each other, the one owned by that “strange” and “uncommunicative” guy? Guess what they found there when he died? A body. Some punk broke in to rob the place and never came out. They found his mummified remains buried under 70 empty bottles of Febreze. Bruce Roberts seems to have kept the corpse of Shane Snellman as a souvenir but it was probably more like laziness.
Is that a body?
The whole bizarre saga happened in Sydney, Australia where the gruesome discovery of a man’s remains at the home of a deceased hoarder occurred in 2017 but the inquest results just went public.
The body had been there 15 years, left to decompose and mummify “among the piles of detritus that filled the home.” In 2002 Shane Snellman went out to work as a burglar and never came home. His family always wondered what happened, now they know. They still don’t believe it.
Roberts “rarely left his Greenwich home, which he inherited at a young age, along with $1 million.” He wasn’t real friendly with the neighbors either. “His fence was lined with barbed wire, and he nailed his windows shut and scattered cans around his overgrown yard.”
They called police when “they noticed the strange man was no longer running his errands or picking up his mail.” They also got a call from “his Uncle John and Aunt Norma Roberts, who never received their annual Christmas card.” They knew something was up when they got there, from the smell. They expected a body but not what they found, and didn’t know there were two. Not for a long time.
In 2017, “police forced their way into the debris-ridden domicile to find boxes, paper, bags, newspapers, luggage and rubbish filed from the floor to the ceiling, along with Roberts’ body.” Well, part of it.
“Half of his decomposing corpse was found in the hallway, and the upper portion was in a room slumped over a heater that was turned on and charring his remains.” The coroner carried out what they found and went away. The family got stuck cleaning up the mess.
Vanished without a trace
It wasn’t until a year later, when professional cleaners who were hired to “remove loads of garbage and sanitize the home,” found the body of Snellman. One of the bedrooms had “an unbearable stench” that turned out to be him.
The 39-year-old “purported drug addict and career criminal” had “just been released from prison and had $0.66 in the bank,” when he “vanished without a trace.” His girlfriend called police when she couldn’t get the money from his unemployment check, which she knew was in the bank. He didn’t need it anymore.
According to Deputy State Coroner Derek Lee, “Snellman entered the home by unauthorized entry. It is most likely he broke in to steal property.” The evidence indicates he “had been shot in his neck, chest and stomach and was on amphetamines” when he died.
The bullet marks were visible on the wall and floor. After dumping the body in a back bedroom, Roberts couldn’t stand the smell. “More than 70 bottles of air freshener were found around Snellman’s mummified corpse, hidden in a bedroom, in a conscious effort to mask the smell.” Senior Constable Jeremy Spencer relates, he “was an extreme hoarder, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Police aren’t even sure how old the hoarder was but the “unmarried, childless bachelor who never worked, had no criminal history and didn’t use drugs” willed his fortune to “John and Norma, along with several charities,” It included “his house and $600,000 in cash.” And a body.
A niece of the murder victim, Tiana Snellman isn’t buying the break-in theory, despite her uncle’s record. “He was a very loving man, would do anything for anyone. He didn’t deserve what he got.” Younger sister Belinda “did not agree with the court’s finding that Shane broke into the trash-filled home.” He would never do that. “He never gained forced entry. He never broke into that home. He already knew him.”