Following our successful debunking of the urban legend surrounding the body under a hotel bed in Las Vegas last Monday, our associate, defense attorney Dayvid Figler, shared information about a confirmed incident of a body found in Las Vegas in a similar unsettling position.

On April 4, 2001, David Sygnarski, a 44-year-old gambler from Easton, Penn., was lured into a room at the off-Strip Maxim Hotel (now Westin) by prostitute Paulette “Sissy” Perry and her boyfriend, Kenneth Grant, both from Greensburg, Penn.

“I was aware of this case because I was involved in it,” Figler shared. (He represented Grant in the case.)

According to legal documents, the couple tried to rob Sygnarski when he entered the room. He resisted, leading to them fatally stabbing him. His body was found “wrapped in garbage bags and concealed under a bed in the hotel,” as reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal at the time — a detail missed in our previous report.

Both perpetrators are currently serving life sentences.

The Myth-ing Piece

Despite the factual basis of Sygnarski’s case, it lacks a crucial element of the typical urban legend: guests in a hotel detecting a foul odor that leads them to a shocking discovery under their own bed. This specific scenario, which has occurred in various cities, was not mentioned in any news coverage of the Sygnarski case. Reports indicated that a hotel staff member found the body two days later.

This oversight, combined with the fact that this incident took place nearly ten years after several versions of the Las Vegas bed-body tale were already in circulation, keeps the story classified as a myth until proven otherwise. (Folklorist Jan Harold Brunvard detailed earlier versions of this myth in his 1993 book The Baby Train.)