Protective Services

It was May of 1998 in the small town of Romeo, Michigan and a crew of detectives found themselves knee-deep in a hoarder’s nest. The once quaint home of the Verellen Sisters now resembled the inside of a dumpster. The whole house was littered with trash: greasy paper bags, half-empty cups of soda, pest strips hanging from the ceiling collecting flies, and ketchup. There was an obscene amount of ketchup smeared over the entire home. With each step into the layers of trash on the floor, the detectives wondered what mysterious noise would pop under their feet. The squish of an old hamburger? A cat? A small dog? After all, the people living here shared this mess with seven pets. The detectives trudged through the sea of clothes, feces, trash, and children’s toys. They were looking for a woman who had gone missing and this was the last known place she had been seen alive.