Son says Worth woman found dead was ‘wonderful’ but was a hoarder
BY STEVE METSCH smetsch@southtownstar.com February 15, 2012 10:43AM
Home filled with garbage in the 10800 block of Oak Park Avenue in Worth, Illinois, Wednesday, February, 15, 2012. The woman who lived there was found dead. | Joseph P. Meier~Sun-Times Media
Updated: March 17, 2012 10:17AM
When Margareta Scheibe grew up in war-torn Germany during World War II, things were hard to come by.
That might explain why she eventually became a hoarder, her son, Bill Scheibe, said Wednesday. She would never buy one item if she could buy 10, and nothing got thrown out.
The family’s home in Worth got so bad that after Bill moved out 20 years ago, he didn’t set foot inside again.
Under piles of trash that filled room after room, Mrs. Scheibe’s decomposed body was found Tuesday by Worth police doing a well-being check. The Cook County medical examiner’s office ruled Wednesday that heart disease killed the 72-year-old woman. It wasn’t clear how long she had been dead, but Scheibe said parishioners at his mother’s church told police they hadn’t seen her in about a month.
Scheibe, 43, of Joliet, one of three sons, said his mother was “as smart as a whip” but lived as though she was always preparing for another war.
“It started when I was a kid, and it got worse as I got older. But it was never to this degree,” said Scheibe, a former longtime sports columnist for the Joliet Herald-News. “My mom was a wonderful woman — she’s my mother — but she was also a very, very, very difficult person to deal with at times. Stubborn.”
Scheibe said a cousin in Kenosha, Wis., called him Friday and said Mrs. Scheibe’s sister had not heard from her in three or four weeks. He said he tried to call his mother and got no answer, so he went to her home in the 10800 block of Oak Park Avenue on Saturday and had an uncomfortable conversation with his brother, Frank, 46, who lived with their mother.
Their father, William Scheibe, died on Christmas Eve 2010, Scheibe said.
He said Frank was an Air Force veteran who had suffered a nervous breakdown years ago.
“I didn’t like how the conversation went, so I immediately went to the Worth police,” Scheibe said.
He said police visited the house three times Saturday but were unable to find Mrs. Scheibe. They checked her bank accounts to make sure no large withdrawals had been made, which could indicate foul play, her son said.
When they returned to search Tuesday, they found her body, he said.
A source said the home was filled with trash, and the body was found buried underneath, but Worth police did not return several calls to confirm the report.
Scheibe declined to talk about the collection of trash and said he hadn’t been inside the house in 20 years.
“If you grew up with a hoarder, would you want to go back?” he said. “You love the people, but would you go back?”
He said he last talked to his mother about six weeks ago.
In the older but tidy neighborhood, the brown split-level home was mostly hidden from passers-by on Oak Park Avenue by huge evergreens. Still, on Wednesday morning, one could see garbage in the front and side yards, and a tarp tossed over one of the two vehicles in the driveway. Mounds of garbage could be seen through the windows, and investigators donned special suits before they entered the property.
John Neary, who lived across the street for the past 20 years, said, “It’s a shame an old lady like that would die alone.”
Mrs. Scheibe was a parishioner at Our Lady of the Ridge Roman Catholic Church in Chicago Ridge. The Rev. Wayne Svida said she joined the parish in 1977.
“She came to 7:30 (a.m.) Mass every Sunday. She would drive herself in her truck. She sometimes would visit our adoration chapel, which is open 24/7,” the pastor said.
Mrs. Scheibe sometimes requested Masses that were said for her late husband.
“She missed him very much,” Svida said.
They married in Germany and moved to America after the war, Scheibe said. Mr. Scheibe was a skilled marble craftsman who worked on many downtown buildings, including the Standard Oil Building, his son said.
Svida was not aware of her hoarding but said her truck “had a lot of stuff in the passenger side.”
“Her appearance and everything else was normal. She washed. She didn’t smell,” Svida said.
He said he hopes her death will remind people “to think about the elderly, especially if they have problems. We need to ask ourselves, ‘How do we help them out?’ ”
Scheibe said his mother also was always picking up coins.
“And since Saturday, when I went to the house, I’ve been finding money,” he said. “I found a penny in the police station on Saturday, found a penny there Tuesday, I found a dollar by my car, and found a quarter today. That’s my mom trying to say goodbye.”
Arrangements are pending.
Contributing: Sun-Times Media Wire, Susan DeMar Lafferty
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