The Austrian police found the body of an 89-year-old woman who died more than a year ago. Her son wanted to continue receiving her benefits. She mummified it in the cellar.
The police said in a statement that the woman believed to have dementia died in June last year.
They said: “The 66-year-old man kept her body in order to continue receiving benefits.”
The suspect lives with his mother near Innsbruck in Tyrol.
He admitted in questioning that after her death, he had frozen her body in an ice pack in the basement to prevent odor. Then he wrapped her in a bandage to absorb any bodily fluids.
“He covered his mother with cat litter, and the body was finally mummified,” Helmut Guffler, who is in charge of the police’s social security fraud department, told the public broadcaster ORF.
When his brother came to ask their mother, he said she was in the hospital. The suspect receives his mother’s welfare payments by mail every month, but recently a new postman asked to see the beneficiary. When his son refused, he reported to the authorities that the body was found on Saturday.
Since June 2020, the man has earned 50,000 Euros (£42,750) from payments. The autopsy ruled out the possibility that he killed his mother.
The suspect was accused of benefit fraud and hiding the body.
