14 DAY TRIAL // The dead body of an Alaska man who had been reported missing over one year ago was found on Monday, under the stairwell of his old house in Eagle River.
According to Anchorage Police Department, 37-year-old Samuel Ephram McAlpine disappeared in March 2013, and his family didn't learn what happened to him until he was discovered dead a year later.
The man was reported missing by his sister on March 29, 2013, and his body was found by his ex-wife Christine Elizabeth McAlpine only this Monday, as reported by Daily Mail. The woman was preparing the house, which the couple had been renting out since their divorce, for new tenants when she made the grim discovery in a storage area under the stairs, which was reportedly blocked by a 3-foot (0.91-meter) tall door.
McAlpine’s mother said the man had gone on a date in March last year and never returned home. She also added that her son would disappear for weeks at a time, but usually made contact after about a month.
As it turns out, McAlpine and his wife were going through a divorce around the time of his disappearance, and the two were attempting to sell the home but found no buyers, so they decided to rent it out.
Police spokesperson Anita Shell details that, before the renters moved in, McAlpine returned to the house and never left.
“What he had done was go back into the home, and he had crawled into the area under the stairwell, a little area under the stairs used for storage, and...that is where he died,” Shell said.
The new tenants moved in at the beginning of April last year but apparently never suspected anything. Shell said that given that they were members of the military, it's possible they didn’t spend much time in the home, and probably that’s why they didn’t detect any weird odor.
“I don’t know how often they were at the house,” Shell mentioned. “Obviously this would have started to smell relatively quickly. I don’t know if they were deployed; I don’t have those details,” the spokesperson went on to say.
It wasn't until McAlpine's ex-wife entered the house to get it ready for new renters that his body was discovered in a nook underneath the stairs.
Authorities are conducting an autopsy to determine the exact cause of death, and although police officers don’t suspect foul play, they believe drugs and alcohol may have been a factor in his death.