'Hoarder' kept mom's remains in storage

CLEARWATER, Fla., Jan. 30 (UPI) -- A Florida woman who kept her mother's remains in a storage unit for up to 16 years was a hoarder, just like her mother, her daughter's ex-husband says.

Law enforcement officials say Ann Bunch's skeletal remains, found Thursday in a coffin inside a storage unit in Clearwater, may have been there since shortly after she died in 1994, WTSP-TV, St. Petersburg, Fla., reported.

Bunch's granddaughter, Rebecca Fancher, said she first learned that her grandmother did not make it to her final resting place last year from her mother, Bobbie Barnett Hancock, shortly before she died. The family ha been unable to afford to transport Bunch's remains to Alabama, where she was born.

Before the discovery of the body, everything in the storage unit was going to be auctioned off because Fancher's mother, who owned it, couldn't afford to pay for it.

"My mom was terribly embarrassed about not being able to do it herself and basically swore me to secrecy," Fancher said.

However, Fancher's ex-husband, John Setlow, said both Fancher and Hancock were hoarders, a compulsion to buy, find and keep things, the Tampa Bay Times, St. Petersburg, reported.

"Bobbie had trouble facing the fact that her mother was gone," Setlow said of his ex-mother-in-law. "They just couldn't part with her."