It was terrifying enough when police this week found skeletal remains in a woman’s New York City apartment and learned that they belonged to the tenant’s mother. In a twist straight out of a Alfred Hitchcock movie, the New York Post reports that Chava Stirn had been sleeping next to her mother’s corpse for three years.
The 28-year-old Brooklyn woman also propped up the remains of her mother, 61-year-old Susie Rosenthal, at the dinner table and dressed her up.
“It’s a scene right out of ‘Psycho,'” an anonymous cop told the tabloid. “This is one of the weirdest cases I’ve ever seen.”
Stirn would reportedly set up Rosenthal’s bones on a bed of trash bags in the kitchen, and would pull a chair near the remains to sleep at night.
She refused to let anyone inside the apartment, so a relative would sometimes leave food outside her door, the police sources said.
Neighbors often heard strange noises coming from the apartment.
“When I listened, she was screaming . . . [She yelled] ‘I kill myself, I kill myself!’” said Malka Lerner, 41.
Police entered the 15th Avenue residence in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn when they recieved a call about a foul smell on Monday. Stirn allegedly said she wanted to harm herself and was taken in for a psychiatric evaluation, as police searched the home.
Another neighbor told DNAInfo that the odor was overpowering.
“I’ve never smelled something like that before,” Amin Ashrafov said.
It’s yet unclear what caused Rosenthal’s death.
