100 Murder Cases

The Case of Mary Reeser

On July 2, 1951, in Saint Petersburg, Florida, Mary Hardy Reeser was visited by her son, Dr. Richard Reeser, in her apartment. Mary had told her son that she had taken two mild sedatives that were mainly used to calm patients before surgery. She had also told him she was planning to take two more before bed. Later that night, she would fall asleep in an upholstered chair for the last time as she would become the victim of an apparent house fire.

The next morning, Mary's landlord would report smelling smoke around 5 am. But it wasn't until 8 am when she went to go deliver a telegraph to Mary that she would smell the smoke again. She discovered soot in the hallway and the doorknob leading to Mary's apartment was too hot to grab so she enlisted the help of nearby house painters to get into the apartment. What they found inside the apartment was truly horrifying. They found the remains of Mary Reeser. Her skull, apparently, was shrunk to the size of a cup, and parts of her spine also remained. But the most terrifying was Mary's left foot was found still in its black satin slipper, the skin unburned. The rest of her remains had been completely cremated.

What makes this case odd was the environment of her surroundings. In order for a body to be cremated, the body must burn at 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit for 3-4 hours. Yet, somehow, the surrounding area of her chair and the rest of her apartment were relatively unaffected. The walls had no burn marks and showed no signs of scorching or burned paint. Light switches were melted but outlets were still completely functional. Candlesticks had melted but their wicks stood upright and a stack of newspapers close to the chair was undamaged. Mary's neighbors were also unaware of the fire.

The FBI eventually declared that Mary had been incinerated by the wick effect when the clothing of the victim soaks up melted human fat and acts like the wick of a candle. As she was a known user of sleeping pills, they hypothesized that she had fallen unconscious while smoking and set fire to her nightclothes. However, there is still some speculation that she died of spontaneous human combustion.