Overland Park woman lived with father’s body for 6 years. Then, her husband called police

Growing up, Mike Carroll’s granddaughter spent weeks, even months, at a time in his Overland Park home.

Carroll, 81, was a prankster, she said. He could be stubborn at times, but he always made their visits lively. She said he always kept a jar of maraschino cherries in the fridge just for her.

“He was wonderful,” she said.

Visits to Grandpa’s house meant Carroll’s granddaughter — who requested her name not be used — would see her aunt and uncle, Lynn and Kirk Ritter — Carroll’s daughter and son-in-law. The couple lived on the home’s second floor with their three children.

An accomplished certified public accountant and veteran, Carroll and his late wife, Margaret Elinor Carroll, bought the home in the 1970s, according to his granddaughter. She said in the 1990s, the Ritters moved in.

According to her, they never left.

Despite his death in 2016, neither did Carroll — until Kirk Ritter called police on Oct. 23, 2022.

The entire time, Carroll’s extended family thought he was still alive. The man’s death had never been reported, his body being secretly kept inside the home where his grandchildren once played.

Now that the Social Security Administration has opened a criminal investigation into the matter, Carroll’s granddaughter wants justice for her grandfather.

“You wouldn’t expect your own family to do that,” she said.

The call

John Lacy, a spokesman for the Overland Park Police Department, said in a statement to The Star that officers arrived at the home on the 11800 block of West 99th Terrace that October morning in response to a call about a man found dead in the home.

The case was investigated as a suspicious death. Johnson County Medical Examiners later determined the man had died in 2016 from natural causes.

Lacy added in his statement that the closest charges applicable for keeping a body in the home would be misdemeanor desecration charges per a city code, which “might not be fitting in this case.”

Carroll’s granddaughter said detectives also told her it was not illegal to keep a dead body in a home in Kansas.

The Johnson County District Attorney’s Office did not respond to The Star’s requests for comment Friday.

Carroll’s granddaughter said the family finally found out he had died after Kirk Ritter called in February. She said Ritter then told them Carroll had died in 2016, but never mentioned how long the body had been in the home.

“We were absolutely shocked,” she said. “He told us that he’s buried with Grandma.”

During the call, he also allegedly said Lynn Ritter had a heart attack. Carroll’s granddaughter said a detective told her it was after Lynn Ritter wound up in the hospital that Kirk Ritter called the police.

A police report obtained by The Star confirms that Carroll’s son-in-law was the one who reported his death.

“I think Kirk got tired of it and took advantage of the fact that she was finally not in the house,” she said.

Stefani Blubaugh, Carroll’s niece, speculated that perhaps Kirk Ritter feared the worst about his wife.

“It’s bizarre,” she said. “I have a lot of questions.”

According to Carroll’s granddaughter, a detective also told her officers walked into a home with hoarder-like conditions that “stunk,” and found her grandfather’s body in his bedroom. Authorities determined the man died in July 2016, because that is when his pacemaker stopped working, Carroll’s granddaughter said.

Most shocking, she said, was when the detective said Lynn Ritter had been babysitting her grandchild in the house after his death.

Attempts to contact

When Carroll’s family called to talk to him in the years after his death, they said they received a plethora of excuses.

Sometimes he was eating. Other times he was sleeping.

In a previous interview with The Star, another one of Carroll’s nieces, Janet Carroll, said she was told similar things.

“We were denied contact with him,” she said. “And now we know why.”

Blubaugh lives in Phoenix, Janet Carroll in Russell, Iowa, and his granddaughter is also out-of-state. The last time he was seen, Blubaugh said, was at a family member’s wedding in early 2016.

Blubaugh said she never could have imagined this would happen. She said Lynn Ritter was Carroll’s “princess.”

“To me, they were pretty normal,” she said.

Several neighbors of Carroll told The Star Friday the family mostly kept to themselves.

It’s unclear what Lynn and Kirk Ritter’s occupations were at the time of Carroll’s passing, but his granddaughter remembers her aunt having odd jobs growing up. She believes the choice to keep him there was financially motivated.

“I think they were very, very dependent on my grandfather’s retirement and his Social Security,” she said.

The Social Security Administration declined to comment on the case.