In August 2005, Wakefield attorney and insurance agent Maxwell Pfeifer didn’t receive an annual home insurance premium check from Florence Bock. So, he decided to send a man from his office to check on her house at 3280 Perry Ave. There was no answer when he knocked on the door and her neighbors didn’t know where she was.

Because Ms. Bock and her late sister, Frieda, had been good clients and timely payers for over 20 years, Pfeifer knew something was wrong. So, he decided to refer the matter to the Bronx’s public administrator, a city agency responsible for protecting the assets of deceased or missing individuals with no apparent heirs.

Pfeifer wasn’t the only one curious and worried about Bock’s whereabouts.

Several months earlier, in May 2005, mailman Brian McDonough told the Norwood News, whose offices are also on his route, that he thought something must have happened to Ms. Bock. Her mail had been piling up since Christmas and the front door was ajar. In a conversation last week, McDonough clearly recalled several policemen entering the house on two separate occasions after being called by neighbors, but they left having found nothing.

Michael Lippman, an attorney and 37-year veteran of the public administrator’s office, said his agency had difficulty getting the police to open a missing person’s case.

“Our office took the bull by the horns,” Lippman said. “Our job is to preserve assets, not to find missing people. We do everything we can to try to light a fire under the police.”

 Nevertheless, the public administrator’s office sent out its own investigator who also entered the house and found no sign of Ms. Bock.

Because the insurance policy on the house expired, the public administrator acted to “preserve the asset,” Lippman said. The agency successfully sought permission in Bronx Surrogate Court to auction the home. Churchill Homes LLC bought the single-family house for $410,000 in 2006.

Just two weeks ago, police were called to the home when workers clearing out the house uncovered human bones, presumably Ms. Bock’s, although the city medical examiner’s office has not yet identified the body or determined the cause of death. Lippman said he heard the bones were found lying “deep under debris” next to a cane.

He described the house as a “Collyer house,” referring to the famous brothers who were both discovered dead among the 100 tons of their obsessively collected belongings in 1947 in upper Manhattan. McDonough also said he noticed stacks of papers and magazines when he peered in the windows.

In addition to the insurance agent, the public administrator and the police, others also visited the house.

Just after the Norwood News published a story on the house in September 2005, the Buildings Department sent out an inspector. Despite the unlocked, open door, he reported: “No action necessary based upon physical observation.” Buildings Department spokeswoman Kate Lindquist said, “The complaint was unsubstantiated as the building’s windows and doors were intact.”

McDonough also says Ms. Bock was getting city pension checks as recently as a couple of weeks ago. For two years, he’s been sending them back to the city coffers, as procedure requires.

Eventually, the public administrator’s office discovered Ms. Bock had a will. Lippman said the lawyer felt it was just as well that the house had been sold, so that the asset could be preserved. If there were a fire, for example, in the uninsured home, the equity would have vanished.

(The attorney for Ms. Bock’s estate, Sandy Glatzer, did not return a call by press time.)

In the two weeks since the discovery of Ms. Bock’s apparent remains was reported in newspapers all over the country, the Norwood News has been able to add many more details. In addition to learning of the plethora of people and city agencies that came into contact with the house without knowing she had been inside all along, there are these facts:

Ms. Bock had been a city schoolteacher. She lived with her sister, Frieda, who died before her. And she was born in 1922 and would have turned 85 this year.

But there are still many more questions left to be answered.

On March 13, the day after the bones were discovered, someone paid all $6,340 of her back property taxes. Who paid them? And how did the city sell the house in 2006 without that lien being settled? 

Did Ms. Bock die of natural causes? If she did, why was she covered in debris in her own home? (The 52nd Precinct’s detective bureau is investigating the matter, but the Norwood News couldn’t reach the bureau’s commander by press time.)

Did she have any relatives? Did they try to contact her during the two years she was missing?

Stay tuned.