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Health See other Health Articles Title: His Body Was Behind the Wheel for a Week Before It Was Discovered. This Was His Life. His Body Was Behind the Wheel for a Week Before It Was Discovered. This Was His Life. A software designer ended his life in his parked car in the East Village. His family asked the police for help finding him, but met resistance. Geoffrey Corbis, who changed his surname from Weglarz, was found in his car on a busy street in the East Village on Aug. 31, a week after he committed suicide and his family reported him missing to the local police station. By Michael Wilson Oct. 23, 2018 A neighbor walking his dog in the East Village saw the man one night, sitting motionless behind the wheel inside a parked car. Two days later, he was still there. The windows were up, the engine off — this during an August heat wave. The neighbor called 911. Soon the block of East 12th Street was busy with police officers and their bosses, the car roped off with yellow tape. There were no signs of foul play. A team from the Office of Chief Medical Examiner arrived that afternoon, Aug. 31, and removed the body to determine the cause of death. People who lived and worked nearby kept their distance. The police later released the man’s name, Geoffrey Corbis, 61, of Bridgeport, Conn., and said he appeared to have died of natural causes about two days before he was found there. None of those initial findings would prove true. Not the cause of death. Not his name. And not the length of time the dead man’s body spent in that car. It was far longer than two days. It is now believed the dead man was there for a full week — a week that his family spent in vain asking the police to look for him. The chain of events serves as a stark reminder that even in 2018 Manhattan, a city that lives beneath the nonstop gaze of countless surveillance cameras, one that for years has urged its citizens, if they see something suspicious, to say something, it is still possible for a dead man in a parked car on a busy block to go unnoticed for days. The events leading up to and following that August day also unspool a story about a distressed man’s plan to raise some fast cash, thwarted by circumstance, and his grim resolve in his final hours to end his life, detailed in farewell text messages to his loved ones. Image The police removed a body from a parked car in the East Village and estimated it had been there two days. It was actually much longer. ‘He had it all’ Geoffrey Corbis was an alias he created in desperation in recent years. Before then, he was Geoffrey Weglarz, born in 1957, one of seven children raised in Florida. He grew up to embrace acting as a passion, performing in local plays and musicals with an intense energy. “He seemed hardly able to get the words out as fast as the synapses fired,” said Sal Biagini, a friend and fellow actor in the busy dinner theater circuit of the late 1970s. “He had impeccable timing.” Mr. Weglarz had come of age during the Apollo missions to the moon, and he and Mr. Biagini would spend hours rehashing the details of each expedition. Mr. Weglarz channeled his leanings toward science and technology into a career in computer programming. He moved to New York City and worked at the software company Hyperion, designing performance management tools. He led a team at Hyperion that worked with universities, signing and managing Yale, Harvard, Brown and dozens of other schools as clients. He traveled the world. He married and had a son, settling down in a large, 19th century house in Fairfield, Conn. His friend, Mr. Biagini, himself having found success as a longtime body double for Robin Williams, visited and marveled at how far his fast-talking fellow space geek had come. “It was Geoff having come to fruition as a responsible, high-earning family man,” he said. “He adored his son. He adored his wife. He had it all.” Then he lost it all. Hyperion was acquired by Oracle in 2007, and eventually, Mr. Weglarz was offered a new position in the company, one that he viewed as a lateral move at best, Mr. Biagini said. He left and went to Dell as a senior director of development. He and his wife divorced. They shared custody of their son. The job at Dell required weekly trips to the company’s headquarters in Texas, which proved a burden, and he left the job in 2011. His search for the next job was exhausting and fruitless. In 2013, when the PBS program NewsHour visited Connecticut to do a story on older, unemployed Americans, the episode centered on an interview with Mr. Weglarz. “I’ve applied for 481 jobs,” he said on the show. “None of them have panned out. They think that anybody over a certain age is going to be used up.” He was nearing the bottom financially. “I’ve gone through my savings. I’ve gone through my 401(k). My unemployment last check is next week. I have about $2,000 to my name, and after that, I don’t know.” His son was 14, and came home from school every day with friends in tow. Mr. Weglarz said it was nice to spend that time with him, but that he wished the friends’ parents would chip in for the snacks they ate. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 2.
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The Big Apple is a busy place. It seems it takes time for people to notice things. ;)
In New York City, people only care about themselves
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