Mary Reeser

Mary Hardy Reeser (March 8, 1884 – July 2, 1951) of St. Petersburg, Florida, was a woman whose death was purported to be a case of spontaneous human combustion.

Death

At roughly 8 a.m. on July 2, 1951, Reeser's landlady, Pansy Carpenter, arrived at Reeser's apartment on 1200 Cherry St. NE, in St. Petersburg, Florida, with a telegram. Trying the door, she found the metal doorknob to be uncomfortably warm to the touch and called the police.

Reeser's remains, which were largely ashes, were found among the remains of a chair in which she had been sitting. Only part of her left foot (which was wearing a slipper) and her backbone remained, along with her skull. Plastic household objects at a distance from the seat of the fire were softened and had lost their shapes.

Reeser's skull had survived and was found among the ashes, but shrunken (sometimes with the added descriptive flourish of 'to the size of a teacup'). The extent of this shrinkage was enough to be remarked on by official investigators and was not an illusion caused by the removal of all facial features (ears, nose, lips, etc.). The shrinking of the skull is not a regular feature of alleged cases of spontaneous human combustion (SHC), although the 'shrunken skull' claim has become a regular feature of anecdotal accounts of other SHC cases and numerous apocryphal stories.

On July 7, 1951, St. Petersburg police chief J. R. Reichert sent a box of evidence from the scene to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. He included glass fragments found in the ashes, six "small objects thought to be teeth," a section of the carpet, and the surviving shoe.

Reichert included a note saying: "We request any information or theories that could explain how a human body could be so destroyed and the fire confined to such a small area and so little damage done to the structure of the building and the furniture in the room not even scorched or damaged by smoke."

Her daughter-in-law said "The cigarette dropped to her lap. Her fat was the fuel that kept her burning. The floor was cement, and the chair was by itself. There was nothing around her to burn".

The FBI eventually declared that Reeser had been incinerated by the wick effect. As she was a known user of sleeping pills, they hypothesized that she had fallen unconscious while smoking and set fire to her nightclothes. "Once the body starts to burn," the FBI wrote in its report, "there is enough fat and other inflammable substances to permit varying amounts of destruction to take place. Sometimes this destruction by burning will proceed to a degree which results in almost complete combustion of the body."

Personal life

Mary Reeser was born in Columbia, Pennsylvania and married Dr. Richard Reeser (b. 1874/5). Their only surviving child, also Dr. Richard Reeser, was born in Pennsylvania in 1910 or 1911.1930 US Census of Columbia, Lancaster County
showing "Richard Reeser age 55 b PA Physician, Mary wife age 45 b PA, Richard J son age 19 b PA" She was buried in the Chestnut Hill Cemetery outside Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.

References

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Reeser, Mary
People from St. Petersburg, Florida
1884 births
1951 deaths
Deaths from fire in the United States
Spontaneous human combustion