Homer and Langley Collyer were not evil people akin to the other people I've mentioned on this blog thus far. They were just two brothers who lived in New York in the 1940s.
Raised wealthy, the brothers lived a comfortable life in a Manhattan row house with their mother and father. Late into their childhood, their father and mother split up. Their father moved into an apartment nearby. The mother and brothers lived in a Harlem brownstone. The brothers, who never married, chose to stay with their mother.
Homer and Langley attended Columbia University, where Homer obtained a degree in admiralty law and Langley studied engineering and chemistry. Homer worked as a lawyer while Langley dealt pianos.
When their father died, he left the brothers all of his possessions and wealth. Soon after, their mother died, leaving the brothers the Harlem brownstone that the three of them had lived in.
After their parents died, life took a turn for the worse for the brothers. Homer suffered hemorrhages in the backs of both of his eyes, leaving him blind. Langley quit his job to become a full-time caretaker for his brother. In doing this, the two brothers began to withdraw more and more from society.
Their withdrawal from society was soon noticed by the public, and crowds would gather outside their brownstone. Teenagers would begin to throw rocks at the windows, so Langley boarded them up, furthering the brother's shut in.
Langley was enamored with inventions. The house was littered with them. He would also walk for miles each day to find stale bread and newspapers, which would eventually become stacked throughout the house.
To try and cure Homer, he fed him a hundred oranges a week, black bread, and peanut butter. Langley was convinced that this regimen, along with permanent bed rest, would cure Homer's blindness.
Meanwhile, the brownstone was falling into a state of disarray. Langley would bring home various pieces of junk that began to fill the house. Cleaning crews came to the house and they managed to clear a small area before Langley stormed in, asked them what they wanted, wrote a check, and sent everyone on their way.
Their heat, electricity, and gas were turned off. Langley left only after midnight and only to scavenge food, collect items, and file complaints against people disrupting their peace. No one had seen Homer in years. Langley was fiercely protective, and never let anyone who came to the house see him.
Later, a caller who used the name "Charles Smith" called the police to report a dead body in the Collyer house. It took the police a full day to gain access into the home, and another five hours of digging in trash until they found Homer's body. He was sitting on a bed, alone, dead from starvation and dehydration.
The process was especially difficult for the police because to evade intruders, Langley had constructed a number of traps and tunnels that only he knew the way through in all the trash.
Now the search for Langley was on. There was no sign of him in the house. No one could find him for days. The police searched all over town for three days. Finally they found a mummified Langley, crushed under mountains of trash from own of his own boobytraps. In his hand was a food tray meant for Homer.
What happened was this: Langley was Homer's only source of nutrition. Homer could not move from the bed, because he was blind and did not know Langley's intricate tunnel system. When Langley was killed, Homer died soon after from lack of care.
The brownstone was torn down and in it's place now, stands a pocket park in the brother's honour.
For more details on the Collyer brother's lives, click this link. Image credits also go to this link.
(The interior of the Collyer brownstone)
(The Collyer brother's park, in place of the brownstone)
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