The remains of a 25-year-old supermarket employee who vanished during a blizzard nearly a decade earlier were discovered in January 2019 wedged behind a cooler in the very st ore where he once worked, authorities confirmed this week.
Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada, a Honduran immigrant who lived with his parents in Council Bluffs, was last seen on the evening of November 28, 2009 — the day after Thanksgiving. Around 6:15 p.m., he fled his family’s home at 719 North 14th Street barefoot and without a coat, keys, wallet or car, wearing only a navy blue hoodie and light blue pants. His mother, Ana, told police he had been experiencing hallucinations, hearing voices that urged him to “eat sugar” because he believed his heart was beating too hard. Family members said he may have been off his prescribed antidepressant medication and had appeared disoriented the previous day after working a Thanksgiving shift at the No Frills Supermarket.
Despite searches by family and friends the next morning, flyers posted around the city, and police inquiries that included other law enforcement agencies and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Murillo-Moncada had previously been deported to Honduras and returned to the United States), no trace of him was found. He was employed at the No Frills store at 1817 West Broadway, less than a mile from his home, though he was not scheduled to work that day.
The No Frills Supermarket closed in mid-2016 and sat vacant. On the morning of January 24, 2019, contractors hired to dismantle shelving and freezer units made a grim discovery: human remains in an approximately 18-inch gap between the back of a roughly 12-foot-tall cooler and an exterior wall in a rear storage area out of public view. The body was in an advanced state of decomposition. Blue clothing found with the remains matched the description of what Murillo-Moncada was wearing when he disappeared.
Identification took several months. In July 2019, the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation’s Criminalistics Laboratory confirmed through DNA samples provided by Murillo-Moncada’s parents that the remains belonged to him. An autopsy conducted by the Iowa State Medical Examiner’s Office found no signs of trauma or injury. Council Bluffs police ruled the death accidental and closed the case.
Investigators believe Murillo-Moncada went to the supermarket after leaving home, climbed onto the top of the coolers — a space former employees said was routinely used for storing merchandise and occasionally for unofficial breaks — and fell sideways into the narrow gap. He dropped about 12 feet and became trapped. The constant noise from the coolers’ compressors would almost certainly have drowned out any cries for help.
Police noted that employees sometimes entered the store even when off duty. Officers had visited the supermarket during the original 2009 investigation, but management told them Murillo-Moncada was not scheduled and had not been seen, so no further search of the premises occurred.
One lingering question remains unanswered: how the odor of a decomposing body went largely unnoticed while the store continued operating for roughly seven more years. Some former customers and staff later recalled a persistent foul smell in the freezer or meat-cutting area. One shopper said the store “smelled horrible for a long time” and had asked the butcher about it, only to be told the area was clean. A former manager reportedly complained about an odor and urged the company to install a barrier across the gap behind the coolers, but those concerns were not acted upon.
Sgt. Brandon Danielson of the Council Bluffs Police Department, who worked the original missing-person case, called the circumstances highly unusual. “You don’t hear about these types of cases — people found in walls — especially in this area,” he said. Capt. Todd Weddum noted that Murillo-Moncada’s mother had long suspected her son never left the store that night.
The family requested privacy as they mourned. After nearly 10 years of uncertainty, they finally received answers about what happened to their son, who had been trapped just a short distance from home the entire time.
