In Detroit, Michigan, 80-year-old Sally Honicek and her sister have lived in a run-down neighborhood in Detroit for decades. Sally's cousin Kajima found that she could not contact Sally and contacted the police to find Sally. Eventually Kajima and police entered the Honicek sisters' home and found her body on a lawn chair in the kitchen. There are no eyes, mouth or nose, just hair and bones under a red sweater and plaid pants. The family's rats and dogs ate parts of her body after her death.
Sally never married and had no children. Kajima found an old photo of herself and her boyfriend when she was young. Sally was a devoted Catholic. For many years, Sally would attend church services every month, wearing smart clothes and beautiful jewelry. But no one has ever stepped foot into this home. No one from relatives, friends, or even couriers came in. As the decades passed and the Sally sisters slowly lost their family and friends, they closed the blinds on their home. No one knew Sister Sally had fallen into the abyss of hoarding and filth until her body was seen, and it was too late.
It wasn’t until Sally’s body was discovered that everyone realized the chaos the sisters had been living in. Looking at their home from the outside, there is no problem at all. The lawn and shrubs have been mowed. "I always suspected she had hoarding disorder, but I didn't expect it to be so serious," Kajima said. "It's a mental illness. If you met them on the street, you would never know it. You look at the house from the outside." , you never know what kind of nightmare is inside." A month ago, Sally attended a fundraiser at a local church, wearing a hair style, lipstick, and a long gold necklace.
Kajima and Sally speak on the phone every month. On Thanksgiving last year, Kajima, who lived out of town, found that she couldn't contact her cousin on the phone. She thought something might have happened. So she called the Detroit police to try to find her cousin. The police came to Sally's door, but no one answered the door. Kajima asked the police to break in, but the police refused. Police then checked hospital records and discovered Sister Sally was hospitalized. Sally's sister Lorraine had been in hospital since suffering a stroke on November 10, but Sally was discharged from the hospital on her own, saying she wanted to go home and feed the dogs. This was the last time Sally appeared in front of outsiders.
The police have been unwilling to break in to check. Kajima couldn't bear it. She believed that something must have happened to Sally. On December 1, she led a retired police officer into Sister Sally's home. She was stunned by the filthy mess in her home. The bed cannot be slept on, the chair cannot be sat on, and there is almost no clean place to stay. Boxes were piled up in every room, greeting cards, unopened bags of clothes, boxes of cosmetics, jewelry, sporting goods and souvenirs, everything was everywhere. They found Sally's body in the kitchen, bitten beyond recognition, and later found the dog's body in another room.
Hoarding is like an addiction in which a person is unable to discard and dispose of their possessions. For Sally, the situation was even worse because she completely isolated herself from the outside world and no one came to visit them. It wouldn't be so bad if only someone came in and took a look. "What can we do? If she doesn't let us in, we can't change anything," said Kajima, who had always suspected Sally had a hoarding disorder. “If Sally had called me to tell me Lorraine was in hospital, I would have called her more often and maybe caught her earlier, maybe before the rats and dogs did.
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