The Forgotten Neighbor on Florida Avenue

At some point, Lowery said, his visits stopped, but she thought little of it because that sometimes happened with older sales staff. She could not recall how her office responded to his absence but said typically the staff sends letters and makes phone calls to inquire. "If we don't hear from them, we have to make the assumption that they decided not to continue their business," she said.

"I do know that we did miss him," she said.

On the Auction Block

Wilson left far less of an impression on Florida Avenue, particularly in the past decade. Stanley Mayes, a former advisory neighborhood commissioner who until 1995 maintained an office three doors from Wilson's house, said he liked to take the Avon boxes the elderly man put out with the trash to use for files. "I'd see him out there with that little hat, maybe cleaning up his steps or putting out the boxes," he said. "But I never did any interacting with him."

Shelby Howard, 54, an engineer whose apartment adjoins Wilson's rowhouse, said he thought that he had moved to a Florida nursing home. "I forgot I had a neighbor," he said.

After Wilson failed to pay $336 in property taxes and did not respond to subsequent warnings, his was among the houses that the District put up for auction in 2002, a sale the city holds annually to pressure owners to pay their back taxes.

Edward P. Wilson, who is no relation, and Barry Gediman were the winning bidders, buying it for $2,264.54. But they did not take possession until this year, and only after the District sought to give those with a claim to the house a chance to get it back. No one came forward. Maryann Young, a spokeswoman for the Office of the Chief Financial Officer, which administers the auctions, said it is not general policy for a D.C. government employee to inspect the property before the transfer.

Edward Wilson would not comment on the purchase, and Gediman did not respond to a phone message. An associate, Jerry Nielsen, discovered the remains on a visit Sept. 26, police said. When investigators arrived, they said, they were struck by many signs of disrepair. In the kitchen, they found no stove or refrigerator.

"The scene tells you that in the latter part of his life, he wouldn't leave his home," Hilliard said.

The remains were taken to the chief medical examiner's office, which has brought in a forensic anthropologist from the Smithsonian Institution.

On Florida Avenue in the days after the discovery, Taw Vigittaboot, who opened a Thai restaurant next door to the rowhouse, said he swept up and threw away the junk mail piling up outside. He didn't get it all. On the top step was a hearing notice from D.C. Superior Court. Slipped under the front door was an unopened Pepco bill.

Inside the house where Edmund A. Wilson spent his life, visible through a grimy ground-floor window, was a room filled with strips of rotting wood, cans of roof coating, oversize bags of plaster and an open hardback ledger.

Beneath it all was a cardboard box with "AVON" printed in bright-blue lettering.

Staff researcher Bobbye Pratt, newsroom intranet editor Jacqueline Dupree and staff writer Cheryl Thompson contributed to this report.