A Florida man was found dead in a sauna, his body charred and skin melted off, his family says.
On Sunday, Dennis Antiporek, 68, left a note telling his family he was going to the sauna at their condo complex. After he didn't come home for hours, his worried daughter, Lara Antiporek, went the sauna to look for him, CBS Miami reports.
The family's attorney, Joseph Madalon, told the Huffington Post that Dennis often used the sauna to relieve chronic joint pain, and he'd sometimes go to a local Denny’s afterward, where he would sit and talk to people. He wasn't there that night, so Lara went to look in the sauna.
It was about 2 a.m., and the sauna appeared to have been left running for hours, Madalon said.
"[When Lara] opened the door to the sauna, she was blasted with so much heat she couldn't stand," Madalon said. "It was excruciatingly hot."
That's where she found her father’s charred corpse.
"When I opened the door, I looked and there was a black man in the sauna. It wasn't my dad," Lara Antiporek told CBS Miami. "So I shut the door, and I looked at the clothes on the counter... and it was his clothes."
“It was her father, completely charred, skin melted off,” Madalon said.
The North Miami Police Department is now investigating the incident. On Thursday, a medical examiner’s office determined Antiporek died of a heart attack. Madalon said he believes the stress of the brutal temperatures caused the cardiac arrest.
“What we were told by one of the detectives is that clearly this is an unnatural death,” Madalon said. “If you saw the body, you would immediately understand how wrong it is.”
The deceased's wife, Ronnie Antiporek, told CBS Miami she can't get the image out of her mind.
“I close my eyes and I just see his face charred,” Ronnie Antiporek told the station. “And this sounds horrible, but there was skin on the floor and on the bench and we shouldn’t have had to see that.”
Madalon said that the family plans to sue the condominium association and the company that maintains the sauna. The family believes the timer in the sauna malfunctioned, never shutting off the heat.
“The heat was still going and the timer on the sauna had malfunctioned,” Madalon said. “It had been running for hours. It literally charbroiled him.”
Madalon likened seeing Antiporek’s body to that of those featured in Bodies: The Exhibition.
“I have seen the body, and it is horrific,” he said. “His entire body [either had] skin completely melted off the muscle... [or] charred skin. Some parts were like the human bodies exhibit [sic] where you can see the veins and muscle. He was truly charbroiled and crispy.”
The family’s lawyer said Antiporek had been looking forward to celebrating his birthday next week, and his upcoming 50th wedding anniversary.
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