Woman Dead Since 2003 Left Sitting at TV<br />By TERRY KINNEY, AP<br /><br />CINCINNATI (Jan. 10) - The mummified body of a woman who didn't want to be buried was found in a chair in front of her television set 2 1/2 years after her death, authorities said.<br /><br /> <br />Johannas Pope had told her live-in caregiver that she didn't want to be buried and planned on returning after she died, Hamilton County Coroner O'Dell Owens said Monday.<br /><br />Pope died in August 2003 at age 61. Her body was found last week in the upstairs of her home on a quiet street. Some family members continued to live downstairs, authorities said. No one answered the doorbell at Pope's home Monday afternoon.<br /> <br />It could take weeks to determine Pope's cause of death because little organ tissue was available for testing, Owens said.<br /><br />An air conditioner had been left running upstairs, and that allowed the body to slowly mummify, he said. The machine apparently stopped working about a month ago, and the body began to smell.<br /><br />"Standing outside, one could smell death," Owens said.<br /><br />Police went to the house last Wednesday after receiving a call from a relative who hadn't seen Pope in years. They found a staircase behind a door blocked by a basket and climbed to the second floor, where they found the body.<br /><br /> <br /> An air conditioner had been left running upstairs, and that allowed the body to slowly mummify. <br /> <br />It was not clear if any crimes were committed, Owens said.<br /><br />Authorities did not identify the caregiver, a women in her 40s who apparently lived in the home with Pope, Pope's daughter and her 3-year-old granddaughter.<br /><br />"The caregiver is not someone you'd think was from another planet or really seems off the wall - (she's) a pretty normal kind of person," he said. "But I think out of loyalty, friendship and love of her friend, (she) decided to keep the body at home."<br /><br /><br />01/10/06 9 EST
