COLUMBUS – A couple is facing charges after their landlord made a gruesome discovery inside their duplex in a small southwestern Franklin County village.
Angela Nichols, 35, and Andrew Nichols, 32, have been charged with abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence after a body was found wrapped in a garbage bag inside their home in Harrisburg on Monday, Sheriff Dallas Baldwin said.
An autopsy by the Franklin County Coroner will determine the official cause of death but Baldwin says the victim appears to have died of a drug overdose and had been in the home for about a month.
At 6:14 p.m., the landlord of the duplex at 1087 High Street told Sheriff’s Office dispatchers that she discovered what she believed to be a dead person wrapped in a garbage bag during a walkthrough of the building, Baldwin said.
Deputies who responded to the call confirmed that it was a deceased person and the Sheriff’s Office Detective Bureau was called to the scene, along with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation, Baldwin said.
The Nichols’, who live on the first floor of the residence, were charged after being questioned and based on other evidence, Baldwin said.
Baldwin’s office is withholding the name of the victim, pending notification of next of kin.