When Hoarding Turns Deadly: Pack-rat Missing For Four Months Turns Up Dead Under Pile of Junk

This is even more ironic than the dude who got hit by a train while waiting on the ghost train. Here a woman is missing since April and search teams scoured everywhere for her. So where do they find here? Under a massive pile of junk in her own home.

A four-month search for a missing Las Vegas woman came to a ghastly end this week when her husband found her corpse in their home amid a labyrinth of squalor that had been impassable even to search dogs.

Bill James apparently had no idea that the body of his pack-rat wife, Billie Jean, was under the same roof as he helped police scour the home and the Nevada desert for any sign of her. Then he spotted the feet of the body poking out of a floor-to-ceiling pile of junk Wednesday, revealing in shocking detail the woman's penchant for hoarding.

Police say they searched the home several times — even using dogs from a unit that helped locate bodies at ground zero after Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina. But they were unable to find the body of amid the piles of clothes, knickknacks, trash and other junk.

"For our dogs to go through that house and not find something should be indicative of the tremendous environmental challenges they faced," police spokesman Bill Cassell said.

Clark County Coroner's office spokeswoman Jessica Coloma said it could take weeks to determine when and how the 67-year-old woman died. The husband has been cooperative throughout the investigation and quickly notified police of his discovery.

One thing is not in doubt about the case: Billie Jean James loved to hoard. It's a behavior that has received new attention this year with two popular reality TV shows — "Hoarding: Buried Alive" and "Hoarders" — that chronicle the lives of people who live in absolute squalor because they cannot bring themselves to throw anything away.

A similar situation could be seen at the James' home in a desert-front cul-de-sac near the Las Vegas Strip. In the driveway sits two huge trash bins that require industrial-sized trucks to haul them away. The front patio is filled with knickknacks including old chairs, smaller trash bins and a 10-foot basketball hoop.

Inside, Cassell said James' piles of clutter left just small pathways to walk and strong odors that hindered their search — generated by animals, decomposing garbage, food, clothes and other stuff.

"If there had been any indication that there was a remote possibility that somebody was back underneath that stuff we would have taken the appropriate action," Cassell said.

Sari Connolly, who walked dogs with James and her husband daily at a nearby park with a group of friends, said the woman bought things at thrift stores each day and accumulated them in the house.

"She became this hoarder person and she wouldn't let anyone come in her house," Connolly said.

Connolly said one of Billie Jean James' closest friends once asked to use the bathroom at the home after a camping trip, but James wouldn't let her in.

"It sounds like it was beyond control," said Connolly, who had a big banner made to help find James during the search.