Elderly woman dies of hypothermia at home
Monday, January 31, 2005 7:52 AM PST
By Leslie Slape
Printable version
E-mail this articleMary D. Burchell, who had self-published a neighborhood newspaper in the Highlands in the early 1990s, was found dead in her home Thursday, the Cowlitz County Coroner's Office reported Saturday. The coroner's office said Burchell, 94, died of hypothermia.
Burchell had been dead for some time before Longview police discovered her body, the coroner's office reported. Someone had asked police to check on her home in the 300 block of Cypress Street, the coroner's office said.
Police told the coroner that she had several working heaters in her home, but none of them were turned on. The coroner conducted an autopsy Friday night.
Burchell, a widow, had a reputation as a character around the Highlands. She said life was too short to sit around in front of the television all day, so in 1991 she began self-publishing the Highlands Own Gossip Sheet -- or HOG Sheet. The paper was filled with her cartoons, poems and ramblings on various topics, according to a 1991 Daily News article.
Burchell had given up a smoking habit to fund the photocopying of her newspaper, she told a reporter in 1991. "I figured, heck, somebody ought to get a paper going and I'm somebody," she said.
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