ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – It was July 1, 1951, and Mary Hardy Reeser was getting ready for bed at her apartment in St. Petersburg, according to The Tampa Bay Times.
The 67-year-old widow was left alone — dressed in a “voluminous” nightgown — after her son stopped by for a visit.
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She had been upset earlier in the day about not being able to take a trip up north, though she had since retired to her home and taken two sleeping pills, with plans to pop two more.
An investigative report shows that Reeser smoked a cigarette, sitting in her easy chair before heading to bed. That was the last day Reeser was seen alive.
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The next morning, Reeser’s landlady tried to deliver a telegram, but the door handle to Reeser’s apartment was too hot to touch.
Firefighters were called to the scene, and they forced their way into the apartment, which was filled with soot and smoke. The woman’s chair was burnt up, with only the springs protruding out from the remains.
Reeser herself was found as a pile of ashes. All that was left of her was a left foot (still clad in a slipper), a scrap of backbone, and a skull that was reportedly “shrunken to the size of a cup.”
Melted human fat was discovered in the carpet, too.
Investigators found plenty of evidence suggesting extreme heat had taken place in the apartment.
The ceiling was damaged by smoke, the top of the drapes were blackened (though not scorched), and a window screen in the dining room was “clogged with soot.”
A ceiling beam had to be extinguished when the firefighters arrived. Aside from the destroyed easy chair, Reeser’s end table had been burnt to a crisp, as well.
In addition, a huge portion of the damage was in the partition between the kitchen and the living room.
However, there was a problem.
Several of the light switches had melted, though switches that were closer to the floor remained intact.
In fact, much of the apartment was undamaged, and none of the furniture left in the unit seemed to have been burned. Her bedding appeared clean, and investigative photos show that the wall was still white down below.
Her stove, heater and refrigerator all worked just fine. And the newspapers left on top of the water heater were intact, as well.
If it weren’t for the soot and smoke on the upper parts of the walls and Reeser’s ashen remains, there wouldn’t have been any signs of a fire in the unit at all.
So then: How was it possible for Reeser to be burnt to cinders without the rest of her apartment burning down?
Theories ranged from suicide after her husband’s death, to spontaneous combustion, to even a lightning strike. The police department received over 100 letters involving such guesses about the case from armchair detectives.
But there was no damage to the electrical systems in the home — only a burnt-out fuse in the water heater — and there were no reports of gasoline or other combustibles at the scene.
Weirder yet, the FBI uncovered three pieces of information that added further to the mystery.
- No odor of fire or burning flesh was reported by the landlady or Reeser’s neighbors.
- No time of death was established, so it was impossible to figure out whether the fire burned quickly or smoldered overnight.
- No smoke was detected by neighbors or others in the area.
Over a month later, police determined Reeser’s cause of death was likely the cigarette she was smoking, which might have ignited her nightgown after she dozed off.
At that time, she was clad in a rayon acetate nightgown and a housecoat. The nightgown, being highly inflammable, could have been ignited by a burning cigarette, causing immediate death if (Reeser) was in a semi-conscious condition.
Naturally, when her clothes became afire, they would also set the chair afire, creating intense heat which completely destroyed the chair and a nearby end table. Once the body became ignited, almost complete destruction occurred from the burning of its own fatty tissues. For once the body starts to burn, there is enough fat and inflammable substances to permit varying amounts of destructions to take place.
Sometimes, this destruction by burning will proceed to a degree which results in almost complete combustion of the body, as in this case.
While such cases are not common, there are on record numerous instances of bodies burning with almost complete destruction. There is, however, no evidence from any of the cases on record to show that burning of this nature occurs other than when the body is ignited by some external means.
The unusual aspects of such cases of burning have been heightened by the fact that in many instances, little damage from burning occurred in the room or area directly surrounding the victim.
St. Petersburg Police Department - Official Statement on Mary Reeser's Death
However, experts said that temperatures of around 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit over several hours would have been needed to disintegrate Reeser’s bones. A typical fire only gets to around 2,000 degrees.
The Tampa Bay Times reports that experts claimed Reeser’s skull should have exploded instead of shrinking if that were the case.
In addition, some questioned why — if Reeser and her chair had caught fire — the room hadn’t gone up in flames along with her.
In 1987, Joe Nickell (a former stage magician and private detective) and John Fischer (a prior forensic analyst with the Orange County Sheriff’s Office) released a report in The Skeptical Inquirer magazine to tackle these questions about the “cinder woman mystery.”
To start, the duo says there could have been more than enough time for the fire to burn enough that it would have cremated Reeser’s bones.
“In the Reeser case, what probably happened was that the chair’s stuffing burned slowly, fueled by the melted boy fat and aided by partially open windows,” the report reads. “From the time the widow was last seen sitting in the chair until her remains were discovered, almost 12 hours had elapsed.”
Nickell and Fischer also explained that the room had concrete flooring, which could have prevented the blaze from expanding.
As for the shrinking skull? The report states that it’s mainly a myth.
One of the strangest and most frequently reported elements of the case — the alleged shrinking of the skull — probably never happened. The self-styled “bone detective” who is often quoted on the subject merely referred to second-hand news accounts and thus spoke of “a roundish object identified as the head.”
Actually, as a forensic anthropologist theorized at our request, Mrs. Reeser’s skull probably burst in the fire and was destroyed, and the “roundish object” could have been merely “a globular lump that can result from the musculature of the neck where it attaches to the base of the skull.”
"Incredible Cremations: Investigating Spontaneous Combustion Deaths" - The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 11
The report even accounts for why Reeser’s foot would have remained behind — she had a stiff leg, which she kept stretched out while sitting. As a result, it would have been outside of the fire’s range.
Regardless, much of the investigation surrounding Reeser’s death is still just conjecture, so the case remains a mystery for investigators to ponder.
However, The Tampa Bay Times says that her family told news outlets they could feel her presence in the home “up until they got rid of her furniture.”
“That’s Grandma again,” they reportedly said when a breeze came through. “Don’t worry. She’s nice.”
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