Chilling video from Chile captured a nun walking down the street with a wheeled suitcase that police later discovered to contain her fellow sister’s corpse.
“There was a pact. The person died a year ago and the other has kept her in a suitcase ever since due to the affection she had,” police official Juan Fonseca told reporters this week, according to The Times of Malta.
Police in the city of Santiago on Monday responded to a report of a suitcase full of bones, which had sparked a panic about drug cartel activity. After reviewing video footage, police discovered the nun, who was seen with the suitcase and wearing her habit.
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The nun, identified by Spanish-language outlet El País as Lorenza Ramirez, 80, who did not belong to a particular religious order but had only taken private vows, had survived her friend, Erica Fernandez, 58, who had died of illness. The police also suggested that Ramirez could have suffered from “some kind of disorder.”
Lorenza Ramirez, 80, is seen walking down the streets of Santiago, wheeling a suitcase that contained the remains of her friend. (Newsflash)
The friends had agreed to stay together even after one of them had died. Fernandez passed away in April 2023, and Ramirez hid her friend’s body in her house for the following year.
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“They maintained a friendship,” Fonesca said of the women. “[Ramirez] states that she was very fond of her and they had made a commitment between them that neither of them would report each other if they died,” he explained, according to a rough translation.
Very few workers are observed this morning in downtown during a national strike and the eighth day of protests against President Sebastian Piñera’s government on October 25, 2019 in Santiago, Chile. President Sebastian Piñera announced measures to improve social inequality, however unions called for a nationwide strike and massive demonstrations continue as death toll reached 18. Demands behind the protests include issues on health care, pension system, privatization of water, public transport, education, social mobility and corruption. (Marcelo Hernandez/Getty Images)
She had intended to keep to the pact due to her great “affection and loyalty” to her friend, but her daughter, upon discovering the situation, convinced her that she needed to lay her friend to rest.
The police autopsy showed no signs of foul play, so they decided not to arrest the nun; however, she faces a possible fine and punishment for breaching public health regulations for not notifying authorities to her friend’s death so she could properly attended to with a burial or cremation.
Instead, the nun had left her friend’s corpse on the street for garbage collectors to grab, but the bad odor coming from the suitcase had raised concerns. A passerby later investigated the case and discovered the body inside, The Mirror reported.