It Never Stops...

Jill Hull pleaded guilty Tuesday to deserting the mail, a misdemeanor. The case is rare but it happens: From North Carolina to North Dakota, carriers in recent months have been hauled to court for failing to fulfill their routes.

Mail has been found in basements, garages and, in Hull's case, a self-storage unit in Michigan's Livingston County. In North Carolina, a mail carrier admitted to keeping junk mail buried in his backyard.

In September, after she had failed to pay her bill, managers opened Hull's unit and discovered thousands of pieces of unopened mail, including 988 first-class letters. Some had postmarks from 2005. "I was unable to deliver all the mail," Hull, 34, said during a brief hearing in federal court in Detroit.

In a court filing, postal investigator Douglas Mills said Hull had planned to catch up with late payments and apparently keep the mail under lock and key until she died.

"Looking back at her time sheets, she was leaving early everyday," said Koss, who became postmaster shortly after the discovery. "It's like it got dark and she didn't know what to do with the mail."

In North Dakota, Allen Prochnow, 62, will be sentenced in March for delaying mail for 10 years. Four tons were removed from his house in Wahpeton, including 3,000 pieces of first-class mail. "He'd see a magazine he'd like to read and pretty soon it was quite a bit of mail," lawyer John Goff said. "A lot of it was piled neatly along walls in the house. In his own mind he was building a bunker. ... His most frequent answer has been, 'I don't know why."'