Features

Body of Transient Found Under Max Anderson’s Deck By RICHARD BRENNEMAN

Friday December 03, 2004

Linda Olivenbaum, spouse of newly elected Berkeley City Councilmember Max Anderson, Jr., made a gruesome discovery in her back yard when she went to move her car recently. 

There, partially hidden below a deck, she found the badly decomposed corpse of a 61-year-old man. 

Police were summoned to the home in the 1900 block of Alcatraz Avenue Nov. 22 along with the Alameda County Coroner’s Office. 

Subsequent investigation and an autopsy revealed that the body had been dead several days from what the coroner’s office said were natural causes brought on by long-standing heart disease. 

Coroner’s spokesperson Frank Gentle said the body was identified by the manager of an Oakland transient hotel where 61-year-old Curtis Bolander had been staying. 

“We’ve had no luck in finding any family members,” Gentle said. He requested anyone with information on Bolander to call the coroner’s office at 268-7300. 

“He wasn’t entirely homeless, but he moved in those circles,” Anderson said. “Apparently he had been feeling sick and was crawling under the deck to seek shelter when he died.” 

Anderson added that he hadn’t been in his back yard for some time.