Some deaths are terrifying to think about. Accidental deaths, especially, can be traumatic to learn about.
The death of John Jones, for example, who died upside down in Nutty Putty Cave in Utah, is particularly difficult to digest. He was stuck in a tiny crevice inside a dank cave, unable to free himself. He slowly suffocated to death.
There’s also the death of Jorge Torres, who was locked inside a suitcase by his girlfriend and left to asphyxiate to death.
Then there’s the case of Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada, who died after getting trapped behind heavy coolers in a supermarket.
At the time, the supermarket was closed, and nobody knew where he was, meaning help was never coming.
All of these deaths have one thing in common: the individuals were helpless to get out of the situation they were in and very likely knew they were about to die in a slow and terrifying manner.
The lesser known of the three cases is that of Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada, though his death is no less haunting than the others.
What makes Larry’s case all the more jarring is that he was considered missing for a decade before he was eventually found, and his excruciating final moments were finally uncovered.
The Lead-Up To Larry’s Bizarre Vanishing
Larry Murillo, 25, worked at the No Frills Supermarket in Council Bluffs, Iowa. He lived with his parents at their home on 14th Street, a ten-minute drive from his workplace.
By 2009, Larry had endured his fair share of mental health struggles. He suffered from depression and anxiety, though he had sought treatment to help him manage the effects of this.
However, on Thanksgiving night of that year, it seemed his mental health was getting the better of him.
He returned home from his shift at the supermarket the following day, and his mother noticed Larry was behaving erratically.
He was seemingly disoriented and confused, so Ana Moncada took her son to the doctor, who gave him some new medication to quell his increasing anxiety.
Things would only get worse for Larry after this.
After taking the new medication, not only did Larry still feel disorientated, he began hearing voices and suffering from hallucinations.
By November 28, just a day after he first began to feel confused and panicked, he was telling his mother how the voices were telling him to eat sugar.
If he ate sugar, Larry said, his heart would stop beating so fast, and his anxiety would subside.
Larry, who typically didn’t eat much sugar, tried to do as the voices told him, but his consumption of sugar proved unsuccessful in stopping his heart from pounding.
Then, things got more sinister for Larry: he began having terrifying hallucinations, and he told his mother that someone was chasing him.
The concerned mother knew nobody was following her son, but nothing she said to Larry seemed to comfort or console him. He told her he was scared and there was little Ana could do to stop her son when he fled the house in a fearful state.
Despite the blizzard outside, Larry ran out of the family home barefoot, wearing only jeans and a shirt. It was just past 6 pm, and it was dark out.
He left without picking up his car keys, his wallet, or any other personal items, including his recently prescribed medication.
It was clear Larry had no idea where he was going, only that he needed to flee his home.
The Murillo-Moncada family waited a short while before calling the authorities to report Larry missing. After contacting Larry’s friends and other family members, it was clear he hadn’t been in touch with any of them to seek refuge.
Ana believed her son may have let himself into his workplace, the No Frills Supermarket.
It was closed at the time, but Larry had a set of keys to let himself in. A subsequent search of the premises found there was no sign of him, much less was there any clues that he’d even visited the store that night.
Hours passed with no word on where Larry had gone. It was as if he’d left the house, walked into the middle of the snow blast, and simply evaporated.
However, he must have gone somewhere. But where?
Where Did Larry Go?
In the days after Larry’s disappearance, his family handed out missing persons flyers and put up posters asking for information on his whereabouts.
Local news stations covered his strange story, asking the public to come forward if they’d seen him.
Weeks passed, and no new evidence was uncovered. Not only were there no witnesses or clues as to where Larry had gone, but he’d not touched his bank accounts since the day he vanished.
Surely, Larry’s loved ones presumed, he couldn’t have gotten far without his bank cards and car, much less without his shoes and socks.
Ana Moncada had a strange feeling her son had headed to the No Frills Supermarket the night he fled from home.
Call it mother’s intuition, but despite there being no evidence to suggest Larry had been there, she had a feeling he was trapped inside the convenience store. There was no evidence to support her gut feeling, however.
The store closed its doors in 2016, and when it did, Ana had to accept any chance of finding her son there was also shuttered at the same time.
Years passed, and Larry’s disappearance fell off the prime-time news headlines. The missing persons flyers that had once filled the windows of County Bluff’s store windows had long been taken down.
The case of Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada was well and truly cold.
An Unexpected Turn Of Events
Then, in 2019, ten years after Larry vanished and three years after the No Frills Supermarket had closed, a team of renovation workers were sent into the abandoned store.
They were tasked with clearing out the remaining shelves and furniture inside, ready to overhaul the store for another owner to take over.
Part of their job was to remove the heavy coolers from the building. When they pulled the coolers from against the walls, they were met with a shocking sight: the decaying body of a man.
The gap between the wall and the coolers wasn’t much—about 18 inches—but it was enough to trap the individual behind, rendering them stuck between the concrete wall and the heavy cooler.
It became clear just how tragic the victims’ death had been. The still unknown man had clearly climbed atop the coolers, accidentally slipped, and fell down the small gap, leaving him helpless.
He couldn’t turn himself around to reach the top of the coolers to climb back up, nor could he push his way out from behind the heavy machines.
There was no doubt this had been a terrifying, panic-stricken death for the victim. Many questions surrounded the dreadful incident, though the main one was who the unfortunate man was.
News of the gruesome finding soon spread, and eventually, word got back to the Murillo-Moncada family.
It seems Ana Moncada was right when, a decade earlier, she voiced her belief that Larry had gone to the No Frills Supermarket and never left.
However, the decaying body still needed to be confirmed as Larry, though the state of the corpse would make DNA testing more difficult than usual.
It was all but confirmed that the body was his when it was announced what clothing the unknown man was wearing: blue jeans and shirt, and of course, no socks or shoes.
When DNA testing was eventually carried out, the body was confirmed to be Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada.
His family, although beside themselves with grief, could finally get closure on the decade-long mystery of what had happened to him.
Despite finally finding his body, there were still unanswered questions, the main one being, why was Larry on the top of the coolers in the first place? Was it part of his hallucinations, or was he trying to get away from somebody?
Subsequent interviews with Larry’s No Frills coworkers would reveal the answer was much less sinister.
Many employees would climb atop the coolers, an area reserved for storage, to simply hang out or avoid doing work.
On the night he ran away, Larry took himself to the closed store and decided to rest on top of the coolers, perhaps finding calm among the chaos of his mind.
However, he accidentally fell 12 feet down the back of the coolers, head first, unable to turn himself around or maneuver himself into a less dangerous position.
After all, he filled just about all of the 18 inches of space there was between the wall and the coolers.
Another question was then raised: why didn’t Larry call for help when the store opened the following day?
The answer to this adds another tragic aspect to the case: his screams and cries for help were muffled by the noise of the coolers.
While his coworkers were mere feet away from him in the store, he was helpless and terrified behind the heavy machines. The loudness of the coolers stifled his cries.
Larry’s death has been ruled accidental, though the cause of his death still remains unascertained. It was either death by suffocation or due to dehydration or starvation.
If it was the former, it’s unlikely Larry was stuck behind the cooler for more than a few hours. If it was the latter, he was likely alive for days, stuck upside down behind the cooler.
In the years following Larry’s death, it’s been questioned why the staff of the No Frills store couldn’t smell the decay coming from behind the coolers.
The pungent smell was never properly investigated, and strange smells they often complained of were shrugged off as part and parcel of working in a convenience store.
Upon finding out the devastating news, Larry’s father, Victor Murillo, said, “Our heads are spinning, finding this out after so many years, and it is distressing. It makes us feel a lot of pain.”
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