It was one of those strange, anonymous urban deaths that you read about from time to time. This time it happened in Lancaster, in the 900 block of Union Street.

Gale Bear, age 55, lived with his mother, Suie, who turned 90 in June. Suie had dementia, said Lancaster city police, and her son, who never married, took care of her. The son, a family member said, had always lived with his parents.


Sometime over the course of the summer, Suie died. No one knows exactly when, because the son never reported it. Indeed, Gale Bear continued to live in the house with his dead mother, who lay on the floor of her bedroom, covered with a blanket, her head propped up by a pillow, for about three months.


Officials discovered her body — which they say was mummified — on Oct. 21, after receiving a call from a friend of Gale Bear's. The friend contacted Gale periodically to check up on him, said Detective Thomas Kiss of the Lancaster Bureau of Police, but when a "planned contact" was missed, the friend stopped by the Bear home to check things out.


The friend called 911. Police and the coroner came, but their first job was getting an emaciated Gale Bear to the hospital. Suie Bear's body was taken to the county morgue, where as of Thursday, it still hadn't been claimed. Gale Bear was the only son of Suie and her husband, John, who died in 1985.


Family members learned of her death only after they were contacted by the Sunday News.


On the street where Suie Bear died and lived for nearly 40 years, some neighbors didn't even know she existed.


"We saw him, but we never saw her," said Elizabeth Nieves, who has lived across the street from the Bears for eight years.


"I had heard he was taking care of his mom, but I only ever saw him, from time to time, bringing a small bag of trash out to the curb," said Lori Wanner, of the same block. "He seemed so frail."


Her story




On a windswept afternoon last week, the older, brick row home where Suie K. Bear and her son lived was darkened, with no curtains in the windows. Around the back, two rose bushes bore single, large flowers — one red, one yellow. The grass appeared trimmed, the place deserted.


A family member said Suie Bear was born in Pequea Township on June 18, 1917, she was the daughter of Christian B. and Annie (Karr) Hess. She had one brother, now deceased, and two sisters.


Relatives think Suie Bear worked at a Lancaster factory — perhaps an umbrella factory — but aren't sure.


She was married to John Bear, who is buried in Millersville Mennonite Cemetery. After John died, Gale took care of his mother.


"The last time we had gone to visit [Suie], Gale wouldn't let us in," said one family member, who didn't want her name used. "He was watching after her, and he wouldn't let anybody else in."


Still, she volunteered, her family had sent Gale Bear a Christmas present last year, and received "a nice handwritten note back from him."


Suie's death, she said, wasn't entirely unexpected. "I know her condition had been deteriorating," she said.


But so too, it seems, was Gale Bear's.


Kiss said that when police arrived at the Bear home, they found Gale Bear physically wasted, with open, infected sores on his legs. He couldn't walk — neighbor Lori Wanner said she saw police take him out on a stretcher — and he "had no idea what was going on," said Kiss.


Kiss said it didn't appear that he had eaten in quite some time.


"A couple of items of canned food had been opened," Kiss said. But that may have been the extent of his food intake for three months.


Upstairs, officials found his mother's body.


Still, "the house had been locked up tight all summer," said Kiss, and putrefaction was minimal.


No foul play




The Lancaster County Coroner's office is conducting an autopsy and did a CAT scan on the body, but there doesn't appear to have been any foul play, said Kiss.


As of Friday, Suie Bear's death had not yet been listed in the Lancaster Newspapers, and no obituary had been printed.


Police talked to neighbors, Kiss said, trying to glean some information about the deceased and her son, but kept getting the same response:


"They kept to themselves."


"A girl next door said she'd been there three to four years and didn't know their names," said Kiss. "They had no visitors, no cars.


"They lived here their whole lives. And nobody knew who they were."