‘Psycho’ Daughter Ate, Slept Next To Mother’s Corpse For Three Years

She’s being called “Psycho daughter,” and when you hear why, you may agree.

Chava Stirn, a 28-year-old Brooklyn woman, was taken into police custody after it was discovered that she had been eating and sleeping next to her mother’s corpse for three years.

Huffington Post reports that 61-year-old Susie Rosenthal was propped up on trash bags in the kitchen and that Stirn, her daughter, would “pull a chair near the remains” to sleep at night.

Of course, anyone who has ever watched the Alfred Hitchcock film Psycho is familiar with this scenario, hence the “Psycho daughter” label, but for those of you unfamiliar, it dates back to the 1960 Hitchcock film and the character of Norman Bates.

Big spoiler alert here if you haven’t seen the film, but in that movie, Bates pretended that his Mother was alive so he could have an alter ego to blame his heinous murders on.

In this particular case, however, it’s not clear if murder is the case or if Stirn is simply suffering from an undisclosed mental condition.

Anyhow, more from the New York Post:

Neighbors didn’t smell anything suspicious until the super of the building tried to investigate a leak coming from the apartment on Monday afternoon, police sources said.

Stirn refused to open her door, so emergency workers knocked it down — and found her in a chair, looking disheveled, surrounded by waist-high piles of trash, police sources said.

Stirn, who lived with her mom before her death, never left the home, neighbors said.

She refused to let anyone inside the apartment, so a relative would sometimes leave food outside her door, the police sources said.

Neighbors often heard strange noises coming from the apartment.

The Post adds that police “entered the 15th Avenue residence in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn when they received a call about a foul smell on Monday. Stirn allegedly said she wanted to harm herself and was taken in for a psychiatric evaluation, as police searched the home.”

According to neighbor Amin Ashrafov, it was a heinous odor. “I’ve never smelled something like that before.”

An anonymous cop added: “It’s a scene right out of Psycho…. This is one of the weirdest cases I’ve ever seen.”

Police also indicated that Stirn would “dress up” her mother’s remains from time to time.

Do you think it’s fair of HuffPo and other sites to call Stirn “Psycho daughter” without a cause of death revealed for her mother? Share your thoughts in our comments section.

[Image via Flickr Creative Commons]