The Mary Reeser Case — The 'Cinder Woman' of St. Petersburg (1951)

On the morning of July 2, 1951, landlady Pansy Carpenter attempted to deliver a telegram to her tenant, 67-year-old Mary Hardy Reeser, at her apartment in St. Petersburg, Florida. Finding the doorknob too hot to touch, she called for help. When neighbors forced the door open, they found the apartment largely undamaged — except for a blackened circle on the floor where Reeser's armchair had stood. Within that circle lay the remains of Mary Reeser: her skull (shrunken to the size of a teacup), a section of backbone, her left foot still encased in a black satin slipper, and a small pile of ash. The rest of her body — approximately 170 pounds — had been reduced to ash. Yet the apartment showed minimal fire damage: a stack of newspapers nearby was unburned, and plastic outlets on the wall had melted from heat without igniting. The FBI was called in at the request of the St. Petersburg police chief. After extensive analysis, the FBI concluded that Reeser had likely fallen asleep in her chair after taking sleeping pills, that a dropped cigarette had ignited her clothing, and that her body fat had acted as fuel in a 'wick effect,' slowly burning for hours. However, many investigators noted that such a fire could not explain the near-total cremation of the body — commercial cremation requires temperatures of 1,400-1,800°F maintained for two to three hours.