Water is the essence of life. Approximately 60% of the human body is made up of water. A person can only survive 3-4 days without water. Today, we have the convenience of buying bottled water, or getting it from the tap at home. Sure, we know what’s in our water when it comes with a label, but what about when it doesn’t?
In 2015, residents of the Grand Chapuletepec apartments in Mexico City, Mexico noticed something odd about their water. They were getting it from their faucets and it had an unusual taste. After complaining to officials, city workers inspected a large water tank that supplies the water for the area. That was when they discovered the source of the odd taste. A body had been dumped in the tank, and had traveled from the main tank and into a smaller filtration tank. The body was completely putrefied. According to the medical examiner, “She was basically ‘soup.’”
Fortunately for the victim, she had had some plastic surgery in her past. Implants are coded with individual serial numbers, which lead investigators to a doctor. He was able to identify her as 27 year old Carmen Esparza
Carmen Yarira Noriega Esparza had been studying psychology in Cancún, but relocated to Mexico City where she pursued a career in acting. She supported herself with two jobs, one as a personal assistant, and another in a restaurant. Her apartment, in the Cuauhtémoc neighborhood, was paid for by her boyfriend, a wealthy businessman whom she broke up with after meeting a wealthy lawyer. Just one week before she was set to move out of the apartment, she disappeared.
When she went missing in February 2014, friends and family contacted authorities, filing a missing person report, then turned to social media, campaigning to try to find her. Photos of her were posted on the streets with the hope that someone would recognize her. They feared the worst, as a human trafficking ring was growing in that part of the city.
A friend, Javier Paz, told the Daily Mail newspaper: “She was a talented and beautiful woman who dreamed of being an actress. When she failed to turn up at the clinic where she worked, we all thought that she might have been kidnapped and sold off into the sex trafficking industry. But it seems that her body was back in her apartment block the whole time.”
As for who killed Carmen – that has yet to be determined.
Carmen wasn’t the first to be found inside of a water tank. On February 19, 2013, the body of Canadian student, Elisa Lam, was found inside one of four, 1,000 gallon water tanks on top of the Cecil Hotel in California.
Now’s the time to ask yourself, “Is drinking ‘corpse water’ all that bad?” Actually, according to a scientist in the field of forensic science, it isn’t. In the case of Carmen Esparza and Elisa Lam, their bodies had reached the stage of “active decay.” Active decay is characterized as being the period of greatest mass loss, which means that the body had been overtaken by billions and trillions of bacteria, resulting in the purge of decomposition fluids into the surrounding environment, or in this case – the water.
Fortunately for us, the filtration process the water underwent before reaching the tap likely killed off a lot of the bacteria. Chlorine is added to water supplies to do just that. The next line of defense is the human stomach. Stomach secretions are made up of hydrochloric acid, which not only helps the body break down, digest, and absorb nutrients, but it also works to eliminate bacteria and viruses.
According to The Daily Beast, it is suggested that the worst case scenario, biologically, from drinking corpse water is that you would vomit, and not feel well for a few days, similar to the effects of mild food poisoning.
For the record we, here at The Scare Chamber, do not recommend drinking “corpse water.”