DECATUR, Ga. — When surveying this quiet neighborhood in DeKalb County, it’s hard to fathom how a body could be found in a backyard treehouse, not 50 feet from several nearby homes.

But that’s what happened recently when Henry Doyle Colon “Hank” Frantz was located in the 100 block of Garden Lane, police said, amid a stretch of dozens or so houses with freshly trimmed yards, bright flowers and neighbors who seem to know each other.

Now many remain perplexed, especially considering the 31-year-old’s skeleton was only located March 16 because his father, Henry Frantz Jr., died a week earlier in a scuba diving accident in Hawaii, authorities said.

Family members found Hank’s body in the treehouse behind his father’s home as they settled Henry’s affairs following his death March 10, according to neighbor Oggi Ruiz.

Ruiz said he was in Miami when he heard the news about the body being found at the home across the street.

The gruesome discovery prompted reporters to descend on his street and knock on his and his neighbors’ doors seeking answers to how this could have happened, and how long Hank’s remains might have went unnoticed in the treehouse.

“It feels like a show,” Ruiz told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Two of the biggest questions remain unanswered: Police and DeKalb’s medical examiner have not said how long Hank’s skeleton had been there or how he died.

“Cause and manner of death are still pending, and the investigation is still ongoing. We have nothing further to release at this time,” a spokesperson for the medical examiner’s office said Thursday.

The daughter of Frantz Jr., Rebecca Frantz Culpepper, told Decaturish, the news site that first reported the death, that Hank had been missing for four years.

Earlier this week, someone left pink flowers addressed to “Hank” outside the brick home, set on a quarter-acre lot just a mile walk from the busy downtown Decatur Square. Several workmen removed the treehouse’s wooden boards and piled them into a landscaping truck.

Months before, in February, Ruiz said a large tree fell on Frantz’s home; a blue tarp still covers the roof.

The AJC canvassed the neighborhood one day this week, knocking on more than a dozen doors in search of anyone who might could shed more light on the mystery.

Several residents said they hadn’t noticed or smelled anything unusual. One neighbor said she used to hear noises in the backyard that she came to learn were from the treehouse. They stopped about two years ago, she said.

Ruiz said Frantz Jr. was a beloved bagpiper, and other neighbors recalled hearing his music at times. Three years before he founded the Atlanta Pipe Band in 1970, he was photographed by the AJC playing his bagpipes as a young Emory University student. He was photographed again by the AJC in 1969. In the accompanying article, he credited the Scottish poet Robert Burns as the inspiration for picking up the instrument.

A couple of pipers saw the older article and reached out, and the word quickly spread in Atlanta’s Scottish community about a new band forming, leading others to join, according to the band’s website. Frantz Jr. was a member until his death.

Hank graduated from Decatur High School and followed in his father’s musical footsteps as a “proud member of the University of Tennessee ‘Pride of the Southland’ marching band, where he played tenor saxophone,” according to his obituary.

He was known for his “sense of humor, musical talent and zeal for life.”

“He made lasting friendships wherever he went and will be remembered for his kind, loving nature,” his obituary added.

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