Newspaper carrier Bruce Pitts knew the elderly couple only by the prayer missives the wife sent to him for working at night and in bad weather, but he felt something was wrong when the papers piled up outside their home.

“It was never like them to leave a newspaper in their tube,” Pitts said Tuesday. “That wonderful, small voice inside me said, ‘This isn’t right.”‘

After his route early Sunday, Pitts went home, napped briefly and, with his wife, returned to Blanche and Fred Roberts’ home, just outside Marion, Ill.

They rang the doorbells but got no answer. Pitts then eased open an unlocked side door and saw the couple about two feet inside, 84-year-old Blanche Roberts helplessly looking right back at Pitts.

Her right leg was pinned beneath the body of her 77-year-old husband Fred, who apparently had died last Wednesday evening of a heart attack after mowing the lawn.

“The good Lord was with her. She was not scared, wasn’t panicking,” Pitts said.