Couple found dead in home with heater turned up to 1,000 degrees

Glennwood Fowler (top right) and Joan Littlejohn (bottom right) were found dead in their home in Spartanburg, South Carolina (Pictures: Facebook/Google)

An elderly couple were discovered dead in their home with their heater found to reach up to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Cops and medics who responded to a welfare check at the couple’s home in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and looked into the bedroom and observed they were deceased, according to a police report.

Medics on Saturday evening entered through the window and unlocked the front door and police said the home was ‘extremely hot’, states the report obtained by WYFF.

A man was lying face up on the bed unclothed and a clothed woman was on the side of the bed and slouched on a chair.

A firefighter said ‘the heater was so hot it looked as if the basement was currently on fire’, the report reads.

‘They then measured the temperature of the heater itself and measured it at over 1000 degrees.’

Assistant fire Chief Brad Hall told WSPA that ‘temperatures reached upwards of 800 to 1,000 degrees’.

A responding officer said the the temperature reading at the home was 96 degrees after it was left open to cold weather for two-and-a-half hours.

The victims’ family members told police that the heater and hot water at the home were both out and that it was ‘getting too cold’. They said they noticed the pilot light on the hot water heater was off and began ‘fiddling’ with the wire until the light turned on, at which point they left.

Family members got worried when they did not hear from their parents for several days. The elderly man had recently fallen and the woman was recovering from hip surgery, they said. Both had health issues and could not move around easily.

The victims have been identified as Glennwood Fowler, 82, and Joan Littlejohn, 84, according to CBS News. There were no signs of foul play.

There were also no signs of carbon monoxide poisoning in the residence, but the bodies will be tested for it. Their cause of death could take several weeks to determine.

Joan Littlejohn recently had hip surgery, her family members said (Picture: Facebook/James Littlejohn)

‘It is possible that they could have had some carbon monoxide poisoning,’ Spartanburg County Coroner Rusty Clevenger told WSPA.

‘What I hope is they may be able to be able to give me an evaluation and tell me if something was wrong, or if there was a malfunction or something on the heater that caused it to be as hot as it was in the house.’

Their deaths come about a week after a couple and their teenage daughter were discovered dead in their $5million mansion in Dover, Massachusetts. And more than a year ago, a hoarding couple were found dead in their home in Yorktown Heights, New York, along with 150 starving cats.