Skeleton in a drawer: a Bellevue mystery

http://www.mtexpress.com/1999/10-27-99/10-27skeleton.htm

Remains used for Odd Fellows initiation rites

Excerpt from Travis Purser's Mountain Express story:

"Before a building can be sold in Idaho, the seller must disclose any murders or suicides that have happened on the premises, the building’s new owner said recently during a tour.

The owner requested that his name not be used in connection with this story.

"I got a call from my lawyer," he said, grabbing a drawer handle at the bottom of a built-in wardrobe, "who told me there was a skeleton in the closet, literally." He yanked the drawer open, and sure enough, a dusty, wired-together, brittle-looking skeleton, screeched into the harsh florescent light.

"My wife’s not too happy about it," the owner said.

It’s not a very big skeleton. Perhaps the bones of a woman or an adolescent. It rests in what appears to be a home-made coffin, and someone has propped its head up with newspaper.

Rumor has it, the owner said, that an individual of Chinese descent drowned in the Big Wood River and someone wired the bones together. The Odd Fellows used the skeleton for Halloween. He added he didn’t know what the legal ramifications of finding the skeleton were and that he hadn’t yet decided what to do with it."