VIENNA (Dispatches) - A man has admitted to bandaging and refrigerating the corpse of his dead mother to conceal her death to the Austrian authorities and continue receiving her benefits.
Local police said on Thursday they had discovered the body of the 89-year-old in a home located near Innsbruck, in Austria’s Tyrol region.
The woman, who is believed to have died in June last year of natural causes, was kept in a cellar by her 66-year-old son. The man has since pocketed a total of 50,000 euros ($59,000) in social welfare on her behalf.
“He made sure that there was no odour or nuisance.” Helmut Gufler, head of the police’s social security fraud unit, told public broadcaster ORF Tirol.
The body was refrigerated with regularly swapped ice packs while body fluids were absorbed with bandages.