Borough Park Woman Lived With Skeletal Remains Of Her Mother For Three Years

In a scene that law enforcement officials described to the New York Post as “right out of ‘Psycho,'” police have identified the skeletal remains found in a Borough Park hoarder’s apartment as the mother of a disturbed woman taken for psychiatric evaluation on Monday.

Cops are now saying the corpse sat decomposing in the apartment for “two or three” years, while the daughter ate and slept next to it.

The New York Post reports:

A Brooklyn woman spent three years living in a cramped apartment with her dead mom — propping her up at the dinner table and sleeping next to her skeleton every night, The Post has learned.

Chava Stirn, 28, even dressed like her mother — wearing the same black outfit and shoes that 61-year-old Susie Rosenthal had on when she died.

“It’s a scene right out of ‘Psycho’ . . . This is one of the weirdest cases I’ve ever seen,” a law-enforcement source said.

… For the slumber parties, she dragged a chair into the kitchen to snooze next to the corpse — leaving her twin bed covered in stacks of paper.

Stirn, who has been identified in other news reports as Chava Spira or Chava Rosenthal, was taken to Maimonides Hospital on Monday for psychiatric evaluation.

Cops came to the apartment after the building’s superintendent came to fix a leak reported by neighbors, according to DNAinfo. The super found the door ajar but couldn’t open it further because of the trash. That and the stench spurred him to call police.

Relatives had no idea that the elder Rosenthal had passed away. Her sister, Janis Gellis, dropped off food daily, but always left it outside the apartment door. It was she who tipped off police that there should have been a second resident of the apartment.

The Daily News reports:

When Spira’s aunt Janis Gellis came by to drop off food, she shocked authorities with the news that her 61-year-old sister — Rosenthal — should have been in the apartment, too.

“She asked who was taken into the hospital and said there should be one more woman living there,” said Mayer Berger, a spokesman for Chesed Shel Emes, a Jewish burial service for the poor.

… Stacks of pizza boxes could be seen strewn across the apartment. The women’s only visitor was Rosenthal’s sister, but she would never go into the apartment, Berger said.

“She brought meals for them once a day and left it in front of the door and they’d take it in,” he said.

The medical examiner’s office is still attempting to determine the cause of death, though police told reporters that no criminality is suspected at this time.