10 Murder Evidence
While attending a Colorado storage‑unit auction, Rick Ratzlaff noticed a shed brimming with police car lights. After purchasing the unit, he uncovered additional law‑enforcement gear, including boxes of court paperwork and sheriff deputy uniforms bearing the name Robert Dodd.
Delving deeper, Ratzlaff found several envelopes stamped “evidence.” Inside lay a blood‑stained rope, an axe, piles of documents, and socks soaked in blood. He promptly alerted the authorities.
The stash turned out to be linked to an unsolved homicide involving 17‑year‑old Candace Hiltz, who had been shot seven times inside her residence. Five days prior, she had clashed with a local deputy.
During that encounter, the deputy was questioning Hiltz’s brother, who was a suspect in a trespassing case. Upset by the officer’s tone, Hiltz shouted at him. The deputy threatened arrest and claimed he had seen Hiltz receive envelopes from known drug dealers before storming out.
Three days later, the Hiltz family stumbled upon their dog’s corpse in the woods behind the house, bound to a tree with the rope and slain by the axe—both items later found in Dodd’s unit.
Two days after the dog’s murder, Hiltz’s mother returned home to a blood‑splattered scene, discovering her daughter’s body hidden beneath a bed. An autopsy revealed seven gunshot wounds from three different firearms.
The case remains unsolved. The evidence recovered from the storage unit was turned over to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. Deputy Dodd was placed on administrative leave and later faced charges of official misconduct and abuse of public records.
9 A Murdered Family
Near Seattle, entrepreneur George Gennai was intrigued by a storage locker that had been rented for twelve years, hoping to unearth valuable antiques. He peeled back thick landscaping plastic and waded through a three‑foot layer of clothing, only to be hit by a foul stench reminiscent of a Vietnam battlefield. Inside a trash bag he discovered a human skull.
Police were called, and medical examiners identified the remains as 35‑year‑old Barbara Bender and her two sons, 15‑year‑old Mark and eight‑year‑old Brian. All three had died from blunt force trauma to the head, and a blood‑splattered hatchet with hair fragments was recovered from the locker.
The Bender family had been missing since 1980, last seen loading a U‑Haul the day after Barbara filed for divorce. Investigation zeroed in on her husband, Mark, who had rented the unit.
Mark was arrested and confessed to the killings, revealing he had concealed his former family inside the locker. After Bender’s new wife failed to keep up rental payments, the locker’s contents were auctioned. Mark was later sentenced to three counts of first‑degree murder, receiving an 80‑year prison term.
8 Meth Lab
Steve and Ken Bohannon, seasoned storage‑unit buyers, snapped up a unit in Rancho Cordova, California for a modest $80. Their excitement turned to alarm when they uncovered boxes boldly labeled “danger” and “poison.”
Inside, they found pipes, beakers, gas masks, and a half‑filled 20‑liter drum of methamphetamine. Hazmat crews were summoned to handle the toxic equipment, confirming the boxes housed old‑school meth‑making gear.
Authorities remain uncertain whether the lab operated inside the unit, but detectives are tracking down the previous owners to determine the full story.
7 Human Bones
When Robert Wood’s Kentucky storage unit went to auction after his death, the buyers expected only clothes and a model train collection. Their hopes shifted dramatically after uncovering several bright yellow grocery bags.
Opening the bags revealed human bones. The facility manager alerted police, who sent the remains to the state medical examiner. The bones were identified as those of Doris Wood, Robert’s wife, who had vanished sixteen years earlier while traveling to visit her sister.
Robert had told his daughter Jennifer that Doris had abandoned them, sparking her suspicions. Despite extensive searches, investigators found only that Doris’s femur had been sawed in half. The case stays open, with police planning another sweep of the family home.
6 Human Ashes
Bill Smith, a veteran storage‑unit auction participant, made an eerie discovery in Nevada: 27 funeral urns filled with human ashes. The previous renter, April Parks, served as a court‑appointed guardian for senior citizens, managing their affairs after death.
Instead of locating families, Parks allegedly hoarded the cremated remains in the unit. She stopped paying rent after being jailed, facing over 200 charges—including theft, perjury, and exploitation of her wards—totaling more than $550,000 in stolen assets.
Parks allegedly siphoned most of her clients’ bank accounts, leaving only a few hundred dollars each, and never assisted them. If convicted, she and her accomplices could face decades behind bars.
5 A Leg
When Shannon Whisnant purchased a storage unit in South Carolina, he thought he’d found a prized barbecue smoker. Opening it, he was horrified to uncover a human leg inside the smoker.
John Wood stepped forward, claiming the limb. Wood’s leg had been severed in a plane crash that also killed his father; he had embalmed it as a keepsake. Financial troubles from addiction caused him to fall behind on the unit’s rent.
Whisnant turned the smoker into a macabre tourist attraction, refusing to return the leg. Wood sued, and the dispute landed before TV judge Greg Mathis, who ordered the leg returned to Wood and awarded him $5,000 from Whisnant.
4 Body Parts
Philip Knight bought a Pensacola, Florida storage unit at auction and was greeted by a strong odor. Investigating, he uncovered ten cardboard boxes holding over a hundred containers of human organs preserved in formaldehyde and methyl alcohol.
Some containers were cracked and leaking. Police traced the former owner, Michael Berkland, to a former medical examiner’s office where he had been dismissed for failing to complete autopsy reports, leading to revocation of his license.
The organs originated from various autopsies he performed at funeral homes. While doctors may retain tissue samples for a year, retaining whole organs is illegal. Berkland was arrested on charges of improper hazardous‑waste storage and driving with a suspended license.
3 Infant Bodies
Andrea Giesbrecht stopped paying her Winnipeg storage‑unit rent, prompting an auction. Facility staff, upon peeking inside, were hit by a foul odor and discovered trash bags containing the decomposing bodies of six newborns.
Police traced the unit to Giesbrecht, who had used a maiden name and false address. DNA from a used sanitary napkin in her home linked her to the infants, confirming they were her children.
During trial, her defense argued the babies were stillborn, but three expert witnesses refuted this, noting the statistical improbability (1 in 500 trillion) and the likely live birth. Giesbrecht was convicted of six counts of concealing a child’s body.
2 ID Theft Business
In Denver, Brandon Michael bought a storage unit hoping for resale items, but instead uncovered boxes and bags brimming with hundreds of passports, Social Security cards, hospital records, drug paraphernalia, pills, and a printer used to forge documents.
Unsure how to handle the illegal material, Michael handed it to police, who told him to discard it. He instead delivered the items to a news outlet, which exposed that the data had been stolen from a local hospital.
Investigation revealed the theft was orchestrated by former hospital employee Dawn Philbin, who collaborated with professional ID‑theft kingpin Paul Simmons. Philbin confessed to siphoning about 20 patient records weekly for over a year and a half, receiving a four‑year sentence; Simmons got six years for producing counterfeit IDs.
1 James Bond’s Car
In 1989, a Long Island contractor paid $100 for a storage container. The next day, he and his brother uncovered a vehicle with fins instead of wheels, hidden beneath blankets.
Truckers contacting them via CB radio guessed it might be the iconic car from the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me. The brothers, never having seen the movie, were clueless.
After watching the film, the contractor realized they’d found the Lotus Esprit used for the underwater sequence. He authenticated, restored, and auctioned the car, which originally cost over $100,000 (about $500,000 today).
The vehicle sold for £616,000 ($997,000) to billionaire Elon Musk, who hopes to develop a functional version of the submarine‑car.