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Test results show drugs in body found behind bookcase

By THOMAS LAKE
Published January 23, 2007

NEW PORT RICHEY - Twelve days she was back there, upside down, wedged between wall and bookcase, first alive and then dead.

Mariesa Weber was 38, living with her parents. They launched a massive missing-persons search, unaware she was home all along. The truth came out Nov. 9, when her sister reached into the crevice and felt cold human flesh.

The family guessed she had fallen headfirst behind the bookcase in her bedroom while trying to connect an electrical cord. That theory still stands. But an autopsy report released last week reveals another factor: She may have been overcome by drugs.

Test results indicate she had recently taken morphine, codeine, marijuana, an antihistamine, an anti-inflammatory, an antidepressant commonly known as Celexa and an antianxiety drug sold commercially as Xanax.

District Six Associate Medical Examiner Susan Ignacio's report said Weber's death was caused by positional asphyxia, which occurs when the position of the body prevents someone from breathing.

She ruled the death accidental, with a contributory condition of multi-drug intoxication.

The report measured Weber at 5-foot-2 and 79 pounds.

"She's a little thing," her mother, Connie Weber, told the St. Petersburg Times in November. "And the bookcase is 6 feet tall and solid. And she couldn't get out."

* * *

Why wasn't she found sooner?

The Webers smelled her body decomposing, but they blamed dead rats behind the walls. An incident report by Pasco County sheriff's Deputy Wayne Johnson stated conditions were so squalid inside the house when the body was found - trash all around, birds and cats and dogs in cages - that he called Code Enforcement and Animal Control.

He found Mariesa Weber's bedroom choked with clothing and debris.

"The piles of clothing in some areas of the bedroom," he wrote, "were as tall, if not taller than me."

No one answered the phone Monday at the Weber residence on Osceola Drive. No one answered the door. Their house has a facade of stone and stained glass, and property records put its value at $285,000.

Now a rusted shopping cart sits in the side yard, and from the doorstep a visitor gets a sharp whiff of animal urine.

* * *

How long was Mariesa Weber trapped alive?

The autopsy report doesn't speculate. Bill Pellan, director of investigations for the medical examiner's office, said it may be a permanent mystery.

But to her mother in November, this was the answer that mattered most.

"God forbid she was two days calling," she said, "and nobody heard her."

Thomas Lake can be reached at tlake@sptimes.com or 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6245.

[Last modified January 22, 2007, 22:13:23]