In 2019, an astonishing and tragic discovery at a closed No Frills supermarket in Council Bluffs, Iowa, revealed the remains of a man who had been trapped behind a refrigerator for a full decade. Workers tasked with clearing out the store came across human remains wedged into the narrow space between one of the massive refrigeration units and the wall, and DNA testing later confirmed that the remains belonged to 25-year-old Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada, who had been reported missing in 2009.
The circumstances surrounding the discovery stunned the local community and gained widespread attention because they highlighted how an ordinary workplace accident could have such extraordinary and devastating consequences. The store remained operational for seven years after Murillo-Moncada disappeared, and his remains went completely undetected even as employees and customers came and went daily. After the store closed in 2016, his body continued to go unnoticed for another three years, lying hidden behind a refrigerator in a space so tight and inaccessible that it rendered any cries for help entirely impossible to hear.