The Collyer Brothers Are Found Dead in Their Own Junk

On March 21, 1947, an anonymous caller who gave his name as "Charles Smith" told the 22nd Precinct there was a dead body inside 2078 Fifth Avenue, the Harlem brownstone where brothers Homer and Langley Collyer had lived as recluses for years. The doors were locked and the basement windows barred, so an emergency squad spent five hours clearing a path through boxes and newspapers stacked to the ceiling before they found Homer, blind and paralyzed by illness, dead of starvation and heart disease. Langley, who did the family's hoarding and had wired the house with traps against burglars and bill collectors, was nowhere in sight. It took until April 8, and a demolition crew tearing into the clutter, to find him: crushed by his own debris in a narrow tunnel just ten feet from where his brother had died. Workmen spent weeks after that hauling roughly 120 tons of newspapers, books, and furniture out of the house, while a crowd gathered on Fifth Avenue to watch.