RIP Yvette Vickers, co-star of "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman," found mummified in LA home

The LA Times reports that Yvette Vickers, a former Playboy playmate who also co-starred in "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" was found mummified in her Hollywood mansion, where she had apparently died a year earlier. She was discovered by her neighbor, actor Susan Savage, tipped off by cobwebs and yellowing letters in Vickers's mailbox.

After pushing open a barricaded front gate and scaling a hillside, Savage peered through a broken window with another piece of glass taped over the hole. She decided to enter the house after seeing a shock of blond hair, which turned out to be a wig.
The inside of the home was in disrepair and it was hard to move through the rooms because boxes containing what appeared to be clothes, junk mail and letters formed barriers, Savage said. Eventually, she made her way upstairs and found a room with a small space heater still on.
She was looking at a cordless phone that appeared to have been knocked off its cradle when she first saw the body on the floor, she said. Savage had known Vickers but the remains were unrecognizable, she said.

Mummified body of former Playboy playmate Yvette Vickers found in her Benedict Canyon home (via @tomtomorrow)

(Image: Undated handout photo of Yvette Vickers)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Lobster

So her space heater was still on even though she hadn’t paid her bills in a year? How’s that work?
- Anonymous
  
  @Lobster – Her bills were probably automatically deducted from her bank account. There have been other cases like this were automatic payments were a factor in a body not being discovered for a long time.
- ncinerate
  
  My bills are all on auto-pay. It’s not that unusual for most of your life to be on autopilot these days. If something happened and nobody around me bothered to notice it would be years and years before an account would run dry enough to bring on any sort of disconnect.
  
  Zombie house would go on, mortgage paid, lawn service keeping the plant life under control, automatic sprinklers handling watering, lights on with nobody home.
  - Halloween Jack
    
    I can totally see that happening. About the only thing that would prevent that from going on for more than a year is that, at least in the US, you have to file your income taxes every year, and even then you don’t have to physically sign a form any more; it may be illegal to have someone enter the PIN for you (or set up some program that would do the same thing, also auto-filling the income and other information), but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be done. Or, alternatively, you could simply not have any income to report, or not enough to require filing, and absent any particular audit triggers, it might be quite some time (if ever) until the IRS decides to audit you.
    
    Jeez.
Anonymous

I just hope she died wanting to be anonymous and not alone.

It is kind of likely she wanted to be alone, given that she lived in a Hollywood mansion. If you got a mansion, you can get someone to be with you. If you spend some time you might get someone who is a good person. She likely had business contacts and she did a good job of being independent. She must not have been too mean to others if Susan Savage was willing to tress pass and break in. In Hollywood people will put you in jail for walking on their grass.

It is unlikely that she was on good terms with any family if she had any.

If someone has a choice of dieing alone, safe, unmolested, and independent or dieing with strangers around them, how is it sad to choose being alone?
rks1157

This puts a kink in my day. I thought of her as one of the sexiest women of B movies ever since I saw Attact of the Giant Leeches. How sad.
Local-Man

My mailbox would be overflowing with junk mail after about 2 weeks.
- Anonymous
  
  This. I’d expect a postal carrier to notice the build up of old mail and do… whatever it is postal carriers do when they think someone died.
  
  So sad.
Brainspore

Sad story. But somehow all I could think of after reading “Playboy Playmate” and “Mummified” in the same paragraph was that Mummy Strippers would be a good title if they ever make a sequel to Zombie Strippers.
Anonymous

Years ago I lived in a sweet art deco building in Los Angeles where we all kept to ourselves. One day I smelled a really really bad smell. It stayed for days and I remember thinking “Man, it smells like someone died in here!” Someone had. It took maybe a week to find her (she lived across the hall). A few years later, I smelled a really, really bad smell again. Again I thought it smelled as thought someone had died — you’d think I’d have remembered that smell. But no, it was another few days before another body was discovered. Both these folks were elderly, single people.
dancentury

Sad…

She was hot!
Bill Beaty

Put on some vinyl tunes

Nick Lowe:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWunemmwJHM
Anonymous

Wait, why did Savage break into the house and creep around rather than call the police?
facetedjewel

There was story in The Local (Sweden) this winter about a man found dead in his apartment. They reckoned he’d been dead for two years. You’d think the smell of decomposing flesh would escape the apartment and alarm the neighbors.

Anyone know of a story of a dead person found in their home exceeding two years?
- Erasorhed
  
  Tokyo’s “oldest man” was found mummified in his home after 30 years dead. Story here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/7917131/Tokyos-oldest-man-dead-for-30-years.html
- lewis stoole
  
  from experience with a neighbor who lived down the hall in an apartment building, with the doors and windows closed–no smell. once the door was breached, a smell that would not go away for months, but now with the power to permeate barriers. the clue that he had passed away within the week were the maggots migrating into the hallway and neighboring apartments. when leaving for work, i noticed a few maggots, not the smell, and i was within close quarters.
Urizen

How very Hollywood noir. A bit Sunset Boulevard, a bit Whatever happened to Baby Jane. Creepy. Hope I can find her films on Netflix.
Anonymous

The 50 foot woman meets the incredible shrinking man. A sign of the times.
emmdeeaych

Having recently been with two people in their last moments, let me say that no one should die alone.
- Ugly Canuck
  
  Are you suggesting that they should always take somebody with them – that people ought to die together?
  
  But I doubt that that’s what you meant – I think you meant to state that no one ought to die while they are alone, or while they are in solitude.
  
  Sadly, when it comes to dieing, it can often be quite sudden. People do sometimes simply drop dead while alone at home.
  
  And come to think on it, dieing in one’s sleep would not be so bad, whether or not there is anybody else in the room with you when it happens.
  And who’s to say that’s not what happened here?
  - emmdeeaych
    
    Since it’s a comment in response to a post about a person dying alone, well, I wrongly assumed the context would be beyond obvious. My mistake. Yes, I mean people should be there for each other in that moment. It is made more bearable. Though, maybe if you’re incapable of interacting with others calmly and constructively, you might be generous and avoid those whose last memories would be so surely soured by your presence.
Anonymous

My first thought was Mulholland Drive, very creepy and sad, and yes, Noir way to go. I remember a story in East Berlin of someone being found dead for 13 years, I think that was the longest I’ve ever heard.

Peace be with you, sweetie.
alllie

Medicare needs to have a program just to contact old people daily. Or even weekly.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Medicare needs to have a program just to contact old people daily. Or even weekly.
  
  I found my neighbor dead after three days. Trust me when I say that, if you don’t get to them within 24 hours, you really want to wait until they’re fully mummified.
  - Donald Petersen
    
    I wonder… does it help being in an arid environment? My dad was a volunteer fireman in the Ozarks during the 90s, and he once came across a week-old corpse in a single-wide trailer during a hot, sticky summer. It was profoundly unpleasant.
    
    Anyway, as Urizen above mentioned, this is a very Hollywood noir story, not far at all from Wilder’s Sunset Blvd. Too close, in fact, for a co-star from Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.
    
    “It’s the pictures that got small.”
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      Where I live now, the dewpoint has been under 10Â° F for weeks. A human body would mummify quite rapidly. Plus, there’s a good chance that the deceased would already be dehydrated at the time of death. I can barely get in enough fluids to counteract the nosebleeds.
- peterbruells
  
  Why?
  - alllie
    
    Why?
    
    So if they are sick and dying they can be rescued instead of laying on their floors and dying.
    - peterbruells
      
      Weekly calls wouldn’t help with that at all, most likely. There are better options, for those who are at a certain risk.
      
      However, more importantly: Old people will die. Old age is not a sickness, no amount of pretending will change this.
      
      Both my grandmothers simply died in their sleep. No call list would have prevented that.
      
      If people are incapable of caring for themselves, then yes, we should reach out to them. But that’s different from making them answer a call, so they might get put on life support and die a week later.
Anonymous

Someone is going to have asked this by the time my comment appears but what kind of life do you lead to not have anyone realize you died until a year after the fact? That’s really kind of tragic.
Anonymous

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2cLmbCyzhE
Wow, just, wow. She looked a little like Lily Cole.
owza

@dancentury Hot you say? http://bit.ly/mnDcwS
ultranaut

For the past several years I’ve been occasionally working on a science fictional story about a man who automates himself out of his mundane existence without being noticed. Increasingly, it seems my own life is following a similar path…
nanuq

This is hardly uncommon for compulsive hoarders (which I gather she was from the description of her house). Once a body is lost in the enormous amount of junk in the homes it can take months to discover.

http://drvitelli.typepad.com/providentia/2010/09/missing-las-vegas-woman-found-after-four-months-in-own-home.html
Anonymous

I remember reading a story on here http://naturalplane.blogspot.com/
about an Asian family keeping their
relatives death a secret for 20 maybe
30 years to keep collecting the deceased’s
pension.

This is a sad story and we should all
pray for her.

I first came accross this story today on
Loren Coleman’s site Cryptomundo as well
as the link toi this webpage. She was a very
hot and beautiful actress. But we all are going
to die someday.

I wonder what she died from anyway?

I hope she did not suffer.

“all death is both natural & unnatural. Death is as much of a part of life as it is in itself, death. We as human beings cannot understand the higher purpose of death because we are on such a low comparison to our heavenly Lord. In everything, there is a reason. In everything, there is a plan, a destiny & a fate to be had. (Now if you were to ask me why did your father die in WWII? Then I would say this to you. All war is bad, however, what would have been worse, allowing the Nazis to reign or to stop, turn and fight? Obviously the latter, and therefore I say this to you, in order to succeed in accomplishing a mission of “peace”, peace as a whole, so that all can enjoy, indeed I believe then that this is a person’s destiny. Now, if you were to ask me about a person dying from a car accident or from a drunk driver. Then I can say this. This I believe falls to chance. This is something I believe God leaves up to each and every one of us. Human Choice as it is known. God doesn’t control everything, if He did, there would be no war, no poverty, no hunger, no abuse, no pain, and no suffering. But then again, ask yourself this, what would be the purpose of living, if everything was taken care of for us)?” -Intellectual
and U.S. Army Chaplain Pastor Joe Freas to me.
Nadreck

That movie was probably responsible for the whole “50-ft Woman” fetish community (and the “Vore” sub-fetish of being eaten by them). Unfortunate in that it’s one of those fetishes that’s physically impossible.
Anonymous

Sad. And reminiscent of “Mulholland Drive”:

“Hey, pretty girl, time to wake up.”
turn_self_off

It is a lonely world we live in…
Anonymous

Also how could a space heater be on for that long and not catch fire?
urbanhick

what a sad, heart-breaking way for anyone to die. RIP, ms. vickers.
Rotwang

That is so sad. A whole year. Keep your friends close, everyone.
rebdav

I suppose this is one of many good reasons to have kids and treat them in a way that they would want to keep track of you.
- peterbruells
  
  Why? Wouldn’t she be dead then?
  
  We have zero knowledge about the circumstances of her dead. She might have died happily, she might have been utterly contempt with not having close people around her.
bcsizemo

So..not to be grim or anything, but:

I’m assuming the reference to the space heater means it basically turned her into jerky? Maybe? I’m thinking after a year you’d start to be pretty decomposed. (I suppose if there are no insects around it might take a good bit longer, but I’d find that hard to believe in a house that was full of “junk”.)

again, not meaning any disrespect. Just thought it was odd that the title say mummified and the article doesn’t elaborate.
Anonymous

Inappropriate, disrespectful and borderline sick comment:

How long before they come out with the sequel, “Attack of the 50 foot mummy”?
planettom

Russ Meyer photographed her 1959 Playboy pictorial. In 2005 she did a Q&A about ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES at the Toronto Classic Movie Festival. Apparently she did commentary on the 2007 DVD release of ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN.
juepucta

Assuming it is her, i love a series of pics she did (Playboy?) posing on a sofa with a bunch of records. Sexy as hell.

-G.
Anonymous

How could a space heater still be running? They leave your power on for a YEAR in California? Unless some acct. was automatically paying the bill…
Anonymous

If I were dead for a month, all the utility co’s would notice. Maybe she had auto-pay set up for everything? Sad.
chgoliz

I thought Hefner loved all his bunnies? Oh, wait, she grew old.

So sad. No one should be that isolated.