The Bank of Abbeville at the corner of South Jefferson and Concord in Abbeville, LA. (Via Google Street View)

That the bank even had an open chimney is one clue this story has a strange tint of innocence to it.  That the 22-year-old who climbed into that open chimney had his name written on his underwear suggests it further. Back in 1984, that guy, named Joseph Schexnider, entered the 14-inch opening in the top of the chimney that protruded from the second-story roof of the Abbeville Bank in Abbeville,  Louisiana. He was a wiry kid so he made it in easily enough. But the chimney narrowed at the flue, reduced to just three narrow inches just above the fireplace. Well into the chimney itself, he was stuck, unable to crawl back up.  And since the room that housed the fireplace  on the second floor was largely unused, the brick chimney a full story above the street became Joseph Schexnider’s tomb.

Over the next 27 years following his death, his body decomposed, became nothing but bones held together by his clothing in the chimney. His corpse went entirely unnoticed. In the world outside the chimney, his sudden disappearance didn’t raise the kind of red flags that it would had Joseph not run first run away from home when he was 10. That he dropped  out of school in 9th grade and a few years later run off to join the circus also bolstered his family’s notion that he’d just left again when he went missing in 1984.

But, no, of course he had suffocated or perhaps starved to death in the brick chimney above Concord and Jefferson Streets. Last May, work crews found a piece of fabric and then a shoe and then ultimately the skeletal remains of Joseph Schexnider during a renovation of the bank. Although the city carried out DNA testing of the remains, it was a pretty sure bet that it was Joseph. Like I said, his name was written in his underwear. His wallet had his birth certificate and social security card. And it was apparently a bit  like him to try to break into a bank without any tools for opening a bank vault once inside. He was remembered as “a somewhat simple person,” the AP reports a local councilman and pastor recounts, and “the kind of guy who would do things without really thinking them through.” His family put his bones to rest last weekend after his removal from the chimney after 27 years. They remember him as a sweet and laid-back person.

I can’t figure out how to end this one. It’s too sad to fully dissect its dark humor. What an awful way to go.