Not all self-storage owners discover Hannibal Lecter's former clients stashed in their units, but Utahns are finding more than cedar chests filled with grandma's wedding pictures.
Nationwide and in the state, storage units are increasingly popular dumping grounds. Police in Yakima, Wash., discovered a woman's dismembered body last week after her daughter confessed to the murder. And last month, police in Federal Way, Wash., found three family members' remains in a storage unit after the owner lapsed on his payments.Although Utah police haven't found any bodies, self-storage unit managers and police have found drug stashes, explosive chemicals used to make bombs, a rotting deer and an abandoned baby incubator in sheds statewide. And two self-storage renters committed suicide in their units this year.
Dick Wilson, an Extra Space unit manager, said drug paraphernalia is most often found in unregulated storage units. "You always find drugs. That's what storage is used for, for some people."
Lt. Mike Nepolis, of the Utah Division of Investigation's Narcotics Bureau, said drug traffickers consider self-storage sheds a safe haven for their chemicals and beakers, marijuana gardens and cash.
"There are probably more drug stashes hidden in storage units than we'll ever know about. Traffickers think that by storing the drugs that way, they won't lose their car or their house," Nepolis added.
Police found $180,000 worth of marijuana, $15,000 cash and three vehicles in a Midvale storage unit and home in March. A search of a Cedar City storage shed uncovered glassware, beakers and other drug-making equipment in February. And Federal Drug Enforcement Agency officials spent a day removing chemicals to make explosives and methamphetamines from a Salt Lake unit the same month.
Car thieves are also using storage units increasingly to disassemble their loot.
Nepolis said storage units are relatively safe from police searches because drug-related traffic and drug manufacturing smells, which would be noticed in a neighborhood, go undetected on a storage unit complex.
Unit owners say they can't affect what goes into their sheds until tenants become delinquent in their monthly payments. Managers usually send certified mail notifications of delinquency for several months then open and inventory the units and try to sell the contents.
Owners are often left with tenants' abandoned junk. Ray Frye, Uptown Storage manager, said a bankrupt recycling company left his complex filled with 1,000 50-gallon drums of toxic waste. The waste, initially admitted with state approval, wasn't classified as toxic until the Environmental Protection Agency revised its regulations after the chemicals had been stored. But the company, delinquent in its payments, had left the state.
Uptown Storage paid $135,000 to transport the waste out of its units.
Rachel Hunt, owner of Hunt Clinton Storage in Washington and Cedar City, said renting a storage unit is as easy as renting a private home or apartment and is cheaper. A 10-foot-by-10-foot shed leases for $15 a month. Some renters actually live in their units without the owners' knowing it.
Although storage unit renters must sign a contract agreeing not to store any illegal substances, explosives or ammunition, Adello Scapicchi of International Self Storage in Salt Lake City said the contract means nothing. "We can't interfere in renters' complete privacy. They could bring in anything."
And they do.
"I always say people store the dangedest things," said Wally Jacobsen, Kearns Self Storage owner. Jacobsen has found a coal stove, a non-functional antique sewing machine and an abandoned pallet of bricks in his units.
Christine Faris, resident manager of Secure-n-Store in Murray, said one delinquent Oregon tenant left 37 video gambling machines - legal in Oregon, but illegal in Utah - in his shed.
Victor Isbell, owner of E-Z Storage in Cedar City, said, "The thing that people leave in storage units most often is girlie magazines. I have to watch the garbage to make sure my sons don't see it." Isbell said police also discovered four stolen motorcycles in one of his units eight years ago when several teenagers were stealing and storing the bikes for future sale.
Jim Hunter, owner of Uptown Storage and Rental in Cedar City, found a 1960s baby incubator outside one unit three weeks ago.