A couple renovating their new home found a body in the attic, reviving a 15-year-old mystery

• A couple in France found human remains in their attic during home renovations.
• The remains were hidden in a hard-to-reach area, unnoticed during the property sale.

A couple were doing work on their recently purchased property in northeastern France when they made a chilling discovery — human remains in the attic.

In a statement shared with Business Insider, local prosecutor Olivier Glady said that the owners of the property in Erstroff, near the German border, found the bones last Saturday afternoon while undertaking renovation work.

The property owners weren't named.

Glady said that the remains likely went unnoticed during the property sale last year because they were situated in a hard-to-reach, almost hidden part of an outbuilding.

He added that the bones were found in a cubby that needed to be accessed through a trapdoor, which was virtually invisible itself.

"It is while searching for the causes of rainwater infiltration into the roof that one of the homeowners somewhat inadvertently gained access to this tiny space, in which he discovered the skeletal remains," the local prosecutor told AFP.

The incident is likely to provide nightmare fuel to potential homebuyers.

In many countries, and the majority of US states, potential buyers do not need to be informed of a death in a property.

However, non-natural deaths, like homicide or suicide, can decrease a property's market value by up to 25%, Randall Bell, a real-estate economist and CEO of Landmark Research Group, told Experian.

Glady said the scene was suggestive of death by suicide — a rope was hanging from a roof beam next to the remains.

A local police investigation is underway to identify the cause of death, Glady said, with the bones having been sent to the Strasbourg Institute of Forensic Medicine for forensic analysis.

A spokesperson for the region's prefect's office told BI that the leader of the Forbach's gendarmerie, Benoit Vautrin, was not at liberty to discuss an ongoing case.

However, Glady told AFP that the skeleton "very likely" belonged to the former homeowner, who disappeared in 2009 when he was 81.

Local newspaper Le Républicain Lorrain identified him as Aloïs Iffly, who it said had gone missing 15 years earlier.

It added that Iffly's wife lived in the house until her death in 2020, after which it was sold to the new owners.