The circumstances surrounding Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada’s death have puzzled both his relatives and investigators since his body was found in 2019.
Although the discovery of the 25-year-old’s body offered his family some closure after ten long years without answers, the location only deepened the mystery surrounding his death.
But now several store employees have shared their views on the mysterious case and explained their thoughts on why it took so long for the fate of the former “No Frills” employee to come to light.
Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada was trapped behind a refrigerator in a US store for ten years (Council Bluffs Police Department)
According to his relatives, Larry was reported missing in November 2009 after he fled his parents’ home in Council Bluffs, Iowa, during a snowstorm and began suffering from hallucinations.
It was the last time they saw him, as over the next ten years his trail went cold and his disappearance remained unexplained – until renovation work began on the supermarket where he used to work.
In 2019, a team of workers was at the No Frills store where Larry was employed, clearing out shelves and freezers.
At that point, the store had already been closed for about three years and now it was finally being cleared out – but no one had any idea what they would find among the sorted out items.
The cleaning crew was horrified to discover a human body wedged behind one of the store’s 12-foot-tall freezers. After extensive DNA testing and based on the clothing he was wearing, the body was determined to be Larry.
He is believed to have been dead for seven years while the store was still in operation and another three years after it closed its doors in 2016.
People cannot explain why no one knew Larry was trapped and why no one heard his cries for help. However, police believe that the noise from the refrigerators may have drowned out his cries for help.
The “No Frills” store had been closed for three years when the horror discovery was made (CBS 17)
Others could not understand why customers and staff had not been alerted to the 25-year-old’s presence behind the refrigerators by the smell, which presumably came from the 25-year-old’s decomposing body.
Store employees who perform similar duties to Larry shared their theories about why no one seemed to notice the smell in a Reddit thread discussing the mystery.
One social media user suggested that it’s much easier than you might think to ignore pungent smells in environments like a supermarket.
They explained: “As a grocer, I can definitely say that stores and back rooms of grocery stores are always full of various horrible smells. Sometimes it’s old dairy products, sometimes it’s garbage, and if there was a dead body in one of my stores, I probably wouldn’t worry about the smell.
“I can completely understand how this happened, as sad and hard to imagine as it is!”
Another Reddit user reinforced this point, explaining that many people “underestimate how gross most stores really are” and the strong smells that linger in the air.
They added: “I was a camp receiver for many years and have developed an immunity to even the worst smells.
“Rats were constantly crawling into boxes and crates and dying, and I would be the last to know about it unless I came across the body, even though the warehouse is my ‘department’. So unfortunately this story doesn’t surprise me at all.
“There were corners of my business, especially in the claims area, that literally no one else would dare approach with a 10-meter pole.”
Others were not entirely convinced. Two employees of a mortician declared that the smell of a corpse was “the worst smell in the world,” and were therefore still not sure how Larry could have gone unnoticed.
“The pungent smell alone is the most noticeable thing in the world,” one of them explained. “I doubt any store or restaurant could ignore it.”
Although we will never know exactly what happened to Larry, a terrifying simulation of what might have happened has given people an idea of what it must have been like to be trapped behind the refrigerator.
