Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 7, 1990 TAG: 9006070255
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: RON BROWN and MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"I've found a little of everything," said Scarbro, who's done maintenance work for four years. "I've never found a head."
Wednesday afternoon, that changed.
Scarbro, who had walked into the basement with a woman resident to check on a possible break-in, found three well-preserved human heads, severed at the neck, wrapped in rags and stored in a box.
"He came just to fix my roof, and we end up in the basement with three heads," the woman said. "It sounds like a movie."
Authorities don't suspect foul play. The heads, which will be shipped to state anatomic experts in Richmond, were just the remains from bodies used in medical or scientific research more than a decade ago, they said.
Dr. Richard H. Fisher, who has owned the house for eight or nine years, said he has no idea how the heads got there.
Scarbro said the stately brick manor in the 100 block of Mountain Avenue Southwest contains just seven of the many apartments he maintains.
He was working in the apartment of the woman resident when she asked him to walk with her to the basement and check on her possessions. She feared a burglar may have taken her things.
Scarbro figured he would snoop around for some relics while he was checking things out.
"I just wanted to see if there were old bottles or anything," Scarbro said.
Instead, he found a dusty round cardboard box with the inscription of a medical college printed on its side. Its lid was off to one side as Scarbro started tugging at a rag inside.
"I pulled on the rag and a head rolled out at my feet," he said. "I felt like I swallowed my heart. I've never seen anything like that. I don't even like to go to the funeral home."
He yelled for the woman, who was waiting outside the basement door while he checked things out.
The woman didn't want to be identified because she didn't want friends, co-workers and business customers to know she lived where the heads were found.
"She don't want everybody to know there are dead heads in her basement," her mother said.
Scarbro said the heads were those of two men and a woman. Each of the men was missing an ear and the woman had red hair and a tarnished earring.
"She had a pretty face," he said.
Dr. William Massello, a medical examiner, took a more clinical approach.
He said all the heads had an odor of either cyanide or formaldehyde - two chemicals formerly used in embalming. He said the ears could have just fallen off over the years.
"They may be decades old," Massello said. "I'd be surprised if they were less than 10 years old."
The woman resident said the men's teeth were showing and were intact. The heads had a nylon string tied around their jugular veins, and one of the men had a deep slash across his cheek.
Dudley Marsteller Jr., the grandson of the man who built the house in the late 1890s, said he doesn't know how the heads got into the basement.
"I regret such a lurid discovery was found in what was once such a fine old house in a nice old neighborhood," said Marsteller, whose grandfather founded a Roanoke tombstone company.
Scarbro just hopes today is a better day.
"I don't know how I'll sleep tonight," he said.
by CNB