MightyFunk

From the AP 5/30/08:

TOKYO — A home­less woman who sneaked into a man’s house and lived unde­tected in his closet for a year was arrested in Japan after he became sus­pi­cious when food mys­te­ri­ously began disappearing.

Police found the 58-year-old woman Thurs­day hid­ing in the top com­part­ment of the man’s closet and arrested her for tres­pass­ing, police spokesman Hiroki Itakura from south­ern Kasuya town said Friday.

The res­i­dent of the home installed secu­rity cam­eras that trans­mit­ted images to his mobile phone after becom­ing puz­zled by food dis­ap­pear­ing from his kitchen over the past sev­eral months.

One of the cam­eras cap­tured some­one mov­ing inside his home Thurs­day after he had left, and he called police believ­ing it was a bur­glar. How­ever, when they arrived they found the door locked and all win­dows closed.

“We searched the house … check­ing every­where some­one could pos­si­bly hide,” Itakura said. “When we slid open the shelf closet, there she was, ner­vously curled up on her side.”

Woman found the home unlocked
The woman told police she had no place to live and first sneaked into the man’s house about a year ago when he left it unlocked.

The closet is part of a Japanese-style room, one of sev­eral rooms in his one-story house where the man lived alone — or so he had thought.

Police were inves­ti­gat­ing how she man­aged to go in and out of the house unno­ticed, as well as details of her life inside the closet, and if she had taken any­thing else besides food.

She had moved a mat­tress into the small closet space and appar­ently even took show­ers, Itakura said, call­ing the woman “neat and clean.”