Actually, that’s not a lot of paper. In hundreds, it would probably fit in a shoebox.
Yes, 2000 hundred-dollar bills would weigh 2000 grams, or roughly 4.4 pounds. A stack of 50 bills is 2.61 inches wide, 6.14 inches high, and I figure no more than 0.43 inches tall, if you double the actual height of the individual bills to account for lack of compression. A men’s shoebox is 10.125 inches wide, 14.75 inches long, and 5.625 inches tall, so you could fit 4 x 2 x 13 stacks in a shoebox, or 5200 bills in it.
So, if the bills were all hundreds, it wouldn’t even fill half a shoebox. You could fit $200k in fifties in a shoebox easily as well.
Correct. The only question I have is why the couple didn’t have it in a concealed safe, and of course I am assuming they did not. There are many companies now that specialize in the installation of small safes for just this purpose; they are very good at what they do and the likelihood is that the safes will never be found.