For ten years, Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada’s family had no idea what had happened to him. Then, in 2019, workers decommissioning a supermarket in Council Bluffs, Iowa made a discovery that finally answered the question.
Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada, 25, disappeared during a snowstorm in November 2009 after arguing with his parents at home.
He left barefoot and hallucinating, and was never seen again. His parents called the police immediately, but the search turned up nothing and the case went cold.
Ten years later, workers removing large commercial freezers from the No Frills supermarket – where Murillo-Moncada had worked – found human remains wedged upside down in an 18-inch gap behind one of the store’s 12-foot cooler units.
DNA testing confirmed it was him.
People had been shopping inches from his body for seven years
The No Frills supermarket had remained open until 2016, meaning customers had been shopping just feet away from Murillo-Moncada’s remains for approximately seven years without anyone knowing he was there.
Investigators found no signs of trauma. Authorities concluded the death was accidental, believing he had entered the store after fleeing his home, climbed on top of the coolers and fallen into the narrow gap where he became trapped and unable to escape.
Police explains why nobody heard him
The question many people asked was how anyone could be trapped in a working supermarket without being found. Police explained that the constant noise of the store’s compressor units made it impossible to hear anything from behind the freezers.
“It’s so loud there’s probably no way anyone heard him,” Sergeant Brandon Danielson told the BBC.
He had been assigned to the original missing person case in 2009 and described the outcome as unlike anything he had encountered before.
“We have missing persons all the time, but this is just unique,” he said.
‘It felt like the earth had swallowed him whole’
For Murillo-Moncada’s father Victor Murillo, the discovery brought an end to a decade of questions, but no comfort.
“We went out to find him, my wife and I,” he told local outlet KETV.
“We got up early and couldn’t find anything. It felt like the earth had swallowed him whole.”
When the truth finally emerged, the family struggled to process it.
“Our heads are spinning, finding this out after so many years, and it is distressing. It makes us feel a lot of pain,” Murillo said.
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