Woman stuffed dead roommate into suitcase to avoid trouble

A Bronx woman has admitted to stuffing her dead roommate in a suitcase and ditching him outside an abandoned home - but insisted she did nothing wrong. Monique Exum, 36, packed roommate Johnny Davis, 73, up after finding him dead in their Fish Ave. apartment on May 31, prosecutors said. She insists she only removed the body to avoid trouble.

"My friend told me if someone dies in your apartment you go to jail, so I got really afraid,' she told police. "I didn't know what to do." So she wheeled the suitcase down three flights of stairs to the porch of an abandoned house at 1309 Needham Ave. in Williamsbridge, prosecutors said. She wrote "rest in peace" on a strip of cardboard and left it atop the luggage.



And there Davis' corpse sat for three months - until a neighbour on Sunday called police to report a suspicious package. Investigators found his badly decomposed body inside and tracked down Exum.

The medical examiner will conduct an autopsy to determine the cause of death. Exum was charged with improper body removal and is being held on $500 bond. Police continue to investigate. "It's like a bad Samsonite commercial," a law-enforcement source said.