Family: Man Whose Body was Left to Rot in Closet for 2 Weeks Wanted ‘Peace’

The niece of a Walled Lake man whose badly decomposing body was found in the closet of the man accused of stabbing him weeks earlier said her uncle was a “be-and-let-be kind of guy” who wanted to be left alone.

“He didn’t like the ugly of the world and he made that very clear,” Christian Watson told The Oakland Press after the Tuesday arraingment of the man accused in her uncle’s murder,  Alex Jay Adamowicz, 21, of Walled Lake.

“He liked peace,” Christian Watson said. “He was a be-and-let-be kind of guy.”

Adamowicz, whose mother turned him into police on Mother’s Day after she smelled a rotting corpse in his closet, was charged with open murder in 52-1 District Court in Novi and ordered held without bond.

He allegedly stabbed his neighbor, 51-year-old John Watson, in the neck during a verbal altercation; wrapped his body in cellophane with the intent  of burying it later; and then stashed it in a closet, where it remained until Sunday when Adamowicz’s mother began questioning him about the putrid odor in the apartment.

The  body may have been in the closet for two to three weeks, and Adamowicz reportedly used deodorized cat litter and other air fresheners to try to mask smell, the Detroit Free Press reports.

Before Watson’s body was discovered Sunday, neighbors in the Tivoli Apartments building had complained of the foul odor and had propped open a door to diffuse it, the newspaper said.

Watson’s sister, Michele Watson, who also attended the arraignment, said she learned the gruesome details of the crime on a television news broadcast.  She called authorities, who reportedly told her they believed the victim to be her brother.

“Obviously it’s totally disgusting, and I can hardly fathom the picture of it all,” she told the newspaper. “Part of me feels sorry for the mother that showed up there on Mother’s Day.”

Michele Watson said she hadn’t seen her brother since early April and had been looking for him.

She said she feels “some guilt” that she didn’t file a missing persons report, “but I didn’t really know that he was, in fact, missing,” she said.

She said her brother had difficulty showing affection, but he hugged his family members and told him he loved them at their last meeting.

“He had a difficult life but he did love people. Most of the people in the family have told me that the last time he spoke to them, he told them he loved them and gave them hugs,” Michele Watson said. “ That was unlike John.”