{"id":2243,"date":"2007-03-28T07:24:24","date_gmt":"2007-03-28T15:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2007\/03\/i_never_smelled_him.html"},"modified":"2007-03-28T07:24:24","modified_gmt":"2007-03-28T15:24:24","slug":"i_never_smelled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/03\/i_never_smelled.html","title":{"rendered":"I Never Smelled Him"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yes, an actual carny<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The decomposed remains of a carnival worker who was reported missing 10 years ago were found in a Bronx home after a water pipe sprung a leak, authorities said yesterday.<\/p>\n

Dwayne Perkins said he went to 911 Ogden Ave. to check on his grandmother Monday evening and stumbled upon the ossified corpse of Michael Johnson in the basement.<\/p>\n

As Perkins peered into a dank corner of the basement to inspect a pipe that was spitting steam, he spotted the old bones.<\/p>\n

“I was ready to leave when I looked down, and I saw a ball covered in dirt, but when I looked closer, I [realized] it was a skull,” said Perkins, 40.<\/p>\n

“It just blew me away.”<\/p>\n

He called the police, who discovered a jacket among the heap of bones and rotting flesh. Inside the jacket was Johnson’s identification.<\/p>\n

“The cops said the bones were in a disarray, probably because some cats, rats and dogs may have gotten to it,” said Perkins, whose family has owned the house for 35 years.<\/p>\n

His uncle, Ray Stirrup, even had a workshop in the basement and was flabbergasted by the disgusting discovery. “Man, just thinking about it — I’ve been sitting here, doing my little projects, and he’s 15 feet behind me. I never smelled him,” said Stirrup, 56.<\/p>\n

Johnson had been reported missing in his native state of Ohio and in New York in November 1997. He was 50 years old at the time.<\/p>\n

He had been renting a $40-a-week room on a third floor of the three-story, 106-year-old house that’s just a stone’s throw from Yankee Stadium, after befriending fellow carnival worker Charles Byrd, Stirrup’s stepson.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, an actual carny: The decomposed remains of a carnival worker who was reported missing 10 years ago were found in a Bronx home after a water pipe sprung a leak, authorities said yesterday. Dwayne Perkins said he went to 911 Ogden Ave. to check on his grandmother Monday evening and stumbled upon the ossified […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the_bronx"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}